


Amongst the Feathers of Your Wings

by aohatsu



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - X-Men, Equal Rights, M/M, Mutants, Special Abilities, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/pseuds/aohatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David has gone through his childhood knowing three things. The first is that humans are God’s children, and the second is that you should always listen to your parents. The third though; the third is that mutants—mutants are to never be associated with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amongst the Feathers of Your Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starsaregoingout (abovetheruins)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abovetheruins/gifts).



> Wings is dedicated to Kayla, because she prompted me with wing!fic way-back-when for her $10 donation to help_japan on LJ. I’m sorry this took so long, but hey, it’s 22,000 words longer than what you paid for! :) I’m still amazed this thing became an x-men au, haha.
> 
> I’m not sure how many first-born children I owe to her at this point, but this fic would honest-to-God not exist if it wasn’t for Bekka. She was there with me every step of the way, from the first paragraph to (nearly) the last, and most of the plot probably legally belongs to her. 
> 
> Nat came out of nowhere and beta’d this for me in something like eight hours. I’m relatively sure she’s a runaway piece of asian tech, but she’s amazing and deserves all the love and thanks in the world.
> 
> All of the gorgeous art that you see is by solarbaby614, who is utterly fantastic, I don’t even know how to explain my glee when I got her graphics in my inbox, okay. You can find all of her art [collected here](http://solarbaby614.livejournal.com/90941.html). Be sure to leave her lots of love, okay! She totally deserves it.
> 
> And everyone else whose cheered me on and encouraged me, thank you, thank you, thaaank you. ♥ YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.

David has gone through his childhood knowing three things. The first is that humans are God’s children, and the second is that you should always listen to your parents. The third though; the third is that mutants—mutants are to never be associated with.  
  
Mutants aren’t human. He doesn’t know how many times he’s heard his father say those words. They were born human, probably, but they had genetic disorders (something called the  _x-gene_ ) that mutated them around puberty. Regular teenagers’ got deeper voices, but mutants turned into... they weren’t human, anymore. Sometimes they would change shape, become  _monsters_ , while other times they would look completely normal and still be able to—to walk through the walls of high-security bank vaults, or to look at you and turn your brain into what looked like soggy cereal. Some of them could actually control regular people’s bodies if they wanted to; could hurt them, if they wanted to.  
  
They could do anything.  
  
“They're dangerous,” is what his father always says when the topic comes up at dinner, or at Church. He likes to say, “Humans aren’t born with guns, but mutants are—guns, knives, bombs, claws, everything. Humans have a choice; mutants are born criminals.”  
  
His dad is one of the chairmen for  _Humans United_ , the organization dedicated to keeping mutants out of the government, so the topic comes up a lot in their house. Davikd can’t actually remember when mutants hadn’t been what his father chose to talk about every time there was a natural disaster somewhere, or an accident on the freeway, or a robbery at some big bank.   
  
It was never something he questioned. David had known about mutants and how dangerous they were since he was little. Since he was six and he first turned his face up, looking at the clouds, and wished he could fly like one the birds soaring across the sky above his house. He and his friends would run around his big backyard with their arms spread out, acting like eagles or airplanes or helicopters, until they crashed into one another and fell onto the ground in wrestling matches.   
  
He's twelve when he hunches his shoulders, whispering that he can't play outside today. He’s twelve when he wishes, for the first time, that he can’t—  
  
—that he can’t  _fly_.  
  
The bumps on his back are small, at first. There are two; just little lumps that feel funny under his skin when he takes a bath. They’re right where his shoulder-blades begin, but seem—rounder, longer, protruding. He eases into the hot water, and then falls asleep as soon as he gets out of the bath, forgetting to ask his mother about them. They don’t seem that important—maybe something funny, like the pinched, flat skin of Amber’s right ear.   
  
He doesn’t have time to think about them again until two days later, when he makes for the shower and glances at his back in the mirror. Instead of small bumps, they’re long, crafting their way down his shoulder-blades and stretching the skin tight across his back. He scrubs at them in the shower, thinking  _okay—maybe they’re just—maybe they’ll just go away if—_  
  
The next day though, during math, Ashley puts a hand on his back, a half-whispered, “Can I borrow a pen?” out of her mouth before she pulls her hand back and interrupts herself with an, “Ouch! What do you have—hey, are you bleeding?” Her fingertips have small, red smudges on them, and David tries to look back to see if his shirt is stained, but it’s black and he can’t see anything from that angle.  
  
He fumbles out an excuse: "I'm not feeling—I need the—going the nurse—" and runs to the bathroom down the hall, and carefully tugs his shirt up to see the red, stinging protrusions that are tearing the skin of his back, longer now, and larger. His skin is split over both protrusions now, and he can see the dull white of the bone that's starting to poke out. He breathes, and goes to the nurse, and throws up. She sends him home, his mother touching his forehead in the car, saying, "Are you okay, mijo? Poor baby."  
  
He tapes bandages to his back awkwardly to hide the blood, and when he wakes up close to midnight, realizes that the bone is jutting out of his back now, ripping the bandages off and tearing his skin so badly that he cries from how much it  _hurts_.  
  
It's three hours later, lying awake in bed as his back throbs painfully, that he thinks,  _I'm a mutant_.  
  
It's half an hour after that that he takes a sharp knife from downstairs and goes to bathroom, locking it behind him. The mirror is large, and he bites his lip as he takes the knife and starts his attempt to cut the bone from his back. It hurts worse than the growing of the bones does itself. He lets out a sob of pain and frustration, dropping the knife a few minutes after starting, blood covering it and the sink, and his hands. He sits on the floor for an hour, his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his arms, just thinking about—about what to do, before he finally gets up to clean the mess.   
  
There's a black feather by his foot, and he nearly slips on it before he sees it. He picks it up slowly, confused and scared all at once, because it's small, and soft, and has blood sticking to it. He turns slowly, and looks at his back in the mirror, and tries to hold back the sob when he sees that the bone that’s pushing its way out of his back is—is—  
  
He pulls at the black feathers, ripping them out, and it hurts like it would hurt when Jazzy would pull his hair, only worse. The feathers litter the floor and sink, mocking him. Then suddenly someone is rapping on the bathroom door, and in a moment of panic he realizes that it's his father, because he says, "David? David! What's going on in there?"  
  
"Nothing!" David says, quickly and grabs a towel that he tries kicking the feathers into, to hide them, before turning on the water and trying to wipe the blood away, but it's all useless because his father bursts through the door. David falls backward in surprise, landing against the edge of the tub. A black feather, disturbed by his landing, jumps into the air and flutters down into his lap.  
  
He clenches his hands, still sticky with blood, and then starts to cry when his father says, "No—not—not you."  
  
He explains, the next day, that he can't play outside any longer. (His father is afraid that pretending to fly will—)  
  
He’s twelve when he stops playing outside, when he trades his academy for a tutor, and his t-shirts for large, bulky jackets, when he goes to dozens of hospitals and clinics and hears  _”—would be impossible, Mr. Archuleta, your son’s... condition... is far too complicated to attempt—“_  for the first, second, seventh time.   
  
He hates the wings that have sprouted from his back, sliding out of the skin like they’re meant to be there, like it’s some sort of natural progression for him to become half-eagle. They’re huge, and hard to hide, even with the vest his father had made for him—the one that folds them in painfully, and keeps them close to his back so that he can go out in public (if it’s a cold enough day to give him the excuse he needs to wear a large, bulky jacket). They’re incredibly difficult to shower with, and his parents spend a lot of money on a new bathroom, just for David. The mirror in the large bathroom is small, so that he can see his face as he brushes his hair, but not the ugly, black wings that instinctively try to curl around his body.  
  
Mostly he hates the way his mother can’t look at him anymore, and how his father can, but only with the long frown that means he’s thinking of another way he could cut David’s wings off. When he turns fourteen, there’s this doctor, Mr. Schwarz, who volunteers to try it. David is asleep when he goes into surgery.   
  
When he wakes up, he can’t feel the fluttering of feathers behind him, because the feathers on his wings have all been removed. The bone stretching out from his back is cut and cauterized, through muscle and skin, and as close to the solid surface of his upper back as the doctor could do it. It left two long protrusions, sore and hot, where the wings used to be, but his father is smiling.  
  
When they begin to grow again, three days later, it hurts so badly that his parents take him back to the hospital, and they put him to sleep just to stop him from screaming. This time when he wakes up, his wings are there—the feathers delicate and small and fluttering all around him. His wings curl into what seems like a ball, surrounding him as if to protect him from the doctors that find themselves unable to reach him through the sudden wall he’s literally put up.  
  
Beyond his wings he can hear the sound of his mother screaming at his father in long, angry Spanish words, and slowly, he flexes his back, and kind of like he can move his arms, moves the wings back. His mother comes in to the hospital room and kisses him on the forehead, and whispers  _lo siento, mijo,_  before she turns around and leaves.  
  
It’s the last time he sees her.  
  
  
  
He’s seventeen when Humans United discovers the Cure.  
  
He’s seventeen when his Dad tries taking his wings away again, and he’s seventeen when he shakes his head and says, “Dad, I don’t want—can’t I just— _no_!” He’s seventeen when he breaks the strapped vest made for keeping his wings folded in against his back, and shatters a window in his haste to get away; away from the needle, and the doctor, and his father, and—and the thing that will take his wings away, for good.  
  
He’s never flown so high or fast before, and he stares down at the huge crowd of people on the streets below him, all lining up to take the cure—or protest the existence of it entirely.  
  
He doesn’t stop for what seems like hours; not until his wings won’t beat against the wind anymore, until they can’t move and he has to glide to the ground, hitting the sidewalk in a neighborhood he doesn’t know some time in the middle of the night, stumbling as he tries to catch his balance. He can’t go home, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, but it isn’t as scary as he thought it would be. Someone yells, a few feet away—an old man in dirty clothes with wide, scary eyes and David doesn’t care that he’s exhausted, he shoots his wings up and suddenly he’s in the air again, flying up and up and away from everyone—everything—on the ground.  
  
It’s a little scary after all.  
  
He falls about ten minutes later, one of his wings giving out above him. He tries to flap it wildly, but it just can’t pick itself up, and he slams into a tree, falling through the branches and leaves until he crashes into the ground. He lets out a long groan, his wing throbbing where he can see it bent awkwardly, and what feels like a hundred bruises make his entire body ache. He scrambles back, leaning against the tree, and slowly wraps his wings around himself for warmth, and some sense of protection.  
  
He has no idea where he is, but it’s dark, and it’s cold. He breathes. He can’t stay here, it’s dangerous. There could be—could be  _wild animals_  or something. He tries moving his wing again, but winces at the shot of pain that drives through it, all the way up his shoulder. Okay, so no more flying tonight, then.  
  
He probably should have known better. He doesn’t even really know how to fly. He’s never done it before, really. For a few minutes, once, in his backyard, before running back upstairs to his room when the gardener had started to turn the corner. It’s just—not something he’s ever needed to do. Or wanted to do.  
  
Maybe there’s some sort of limit, or maybe he was just doing it wrong. Either way, his wings don’t feel as fluttery as they usually do, don’t feel light like feathers—they feel as heavy as bricks, hanging on his back. The bottom feathers drag along the dirt as he gets up and starts to walk, and David can’t bring himself to lift them up high enough that they aren’t touching the ground. He’s so tired that he doesn’t realize he’s falling forward again until he lands on the ground, mud splattering out against his chest and wings when he collapses into the wet patch of dirt beneath him.   
  
When he wakes up, there’s a woman with long, dark marks on her neck, and they weave down her arm in the shape of black wings. She’s smiling at him. He’s on a cot—a makeshift cot, it feels like, and he can see bright blue sky out of the window in front of him, past the two chairs and the hundreds of buttons and knobs. “Hey,” she says, still smiling. Her smile gets bigger. “Don’t worry, the ground isn’t moving. You’re on a plane, kiddo. We’ll land soon.”  
  
“I’m on—“ He notices then, that the black wings on her arm are slowly folding in, changing into the shape of a purple cat—two purple cats, their tails entwined, mischievous grins on their faces—and he looks up at her face with wide eyes. He gulps and finishes the question, “—a plane?”  
  
“Mmhmm,” she murmurs, and gets up, grabbing a water bottle from what looks like a cooler. “Here,” she says, throwing it at him. He doesn’t catch it, and it rolls on the floor where it hit with the movement of the plane.  
  
“Need to work on your catching skills,” she says, shaking her head. “Try again.”  
  
When she throws another one, he catches it.  
  
“Why am I—“  
  
“The Professor,” she says, nodding, like David should know who that is, “told us where you were. He said you were in trouble and judging by that broken wing...”  
  
David glances back at his wing, and realizes it’s been bandaged—somewhat haphazardly—with white gauze around the broken piece of bone. He can feel the dull ache and wonders idly when it had actually broken.  
  
“We should have brought David, but he wasn’t even awake yet. Kris switched him for kid duty last night,” she says, seemingly apologetic and David shakes his head, still confused.  
  
“Who are you?” His voice cracks on the words, but he doesn’t drink from the bottle of water. Her tattoos are still sliding along her skin, gradually moving and changing style.  _Mutant,_  he thinks, and then feels guilty.  _So are you, David._  
  
“Oh,” she says, laughing. “I’m Carly Smithson. Sorry, rude. I’ve just been staring at your wings for the past hour; must’ve gone a little loopy. They’re beautiful, by the way.” Cascades of black feathers suddenly cover both her arms, running down and curling around the skin. “I can’t get these ones,” she adds, holding up her arms together, “to look anywhere near as pretty as yours. I’ve been trying.”  
  
David takes in everything she’s saying, and decides to focus on her name, for the moment.  
  
“I’m David.”  
  
“David Archuleta, seventeen years old, with the ability to fly. I’ve read your file, sweetheart.”  
  
David wants to say  _what file?_  but jerks backward instead when the woman leans forward, a hand reaching out to slide along his wing feathers, like someone petting their bird. “Don’t—“ he says, angry and confused, and—and scared. His wings instinctively curl a little, the tips brushing against his arms.   
  
“Sorry,” she says, raising her hands up. “I always forget not everyone likes showing off.”  
  
David’s wings curl further around him as he backs up as much as he can, and Carly’s smile drops even more. She says, “David, I didn’t mean to scare you. Don’t hide.”  
  
Someone calls from up front, “We’re landing!” right then, and David is saved from responding. Carly gives him a last look before saying, “Buckle up,” and then sits down in the chair a little ways away, buckling herself in.  
  
  
  
David follows Carly and the pilot of the plane inside the long hallway after they land, inside some sort of—hanger? Everything is big and shiny, metallic-like, and David is wishing for some sort of picture to miraculously show up on the wall, just to make it a little less terrifying. (Family portrait or poster of Elvis or dogs playing poker, he really doesn’t even care what.) He has no idea where he is, but he knows he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.   
  
“Don’t look so scared,” the pilot says, his long dreads falling into his face as they walk. “The professor is pretty cool, as far as old guys go.”  
  
“Besides,” Carly adds, “he sent us to find you. It’s not like he’s going to say you’re not allowed to stay. Not that he’d ever do that; we get our fair share of random kids at the door. Speaking of, what happened to that new kid, Jason? The one who set everybody’s homework on fire?”  
  
David is about to ask who the professor is when another voice, one that sounds really far away, answers instead, and drowns out the conversation Carly and Jason are having.  _The headmaster of this school, Mr. Archuleta,_  the voice says, and David finds himself whipping around, looking for the owner of said voice.  
  
 _Through the door just in front of you,_  the voice says.  _I’ll explain everything._  
  
Carly rolls her eyes at something Jason says, the tail end being, “—Adam’s hair dye,” while pushing a button at the door directly in front of them. It’s another big, metal one, and turns out to be the entrance to an elevator. When they get out, just one floor up, there’s a man in a wheelchair, smiling, and when he says, “Hello, Mr. Archuleta, Carly, Jason,” it’s in the same voice as the one in his head.  
  
Okay, so he’s not crazy after all. That’s probably, um, good. (Why are mutants suddenly all over the place, he can’t help but think, and a hand turns into a fist. He doesn’t want—people in his head, or drawing his wings all over their arms, or—or—)  
  
“I apologize,” the man says, suddenly. “I won’t speak to you telepathically if it’s uncomfortable for you. Come into my office, Mr. Archuleta. Let me explain your options.”  
  
At David’s surprised look, he adds, “Yes, you do have them.”  
  
Jason ends up leaving, waving quickly, but Carly follows them into the large, pristine office. The professor—because Archie thinks this must be him?—wheels his way behind a desk, where he pulls out a folder, and says, “Please, sit down.”  
  
Carly does immediately, and David slowly follows, silently thankful for the large couch. He never can sit in regular chairs very comfortably; his wings are just so big when they aren’t held in with his vest. (The vest he broke, he thinks, wincing at how dumb that was.)  
  
“I,” the professor begins, looking at David, “am a mutant, Mr. Archuleta, as are you and this young woman here, Mrs. Carly Smithson.” David glances at Carly again, and at the tattoos dancing along her skin. He knows that, unfortunately. He shuffles his feet, and his wings move a little, spreading out before he realizes it. “Mr. Archuleta,” the man continues. “This is an academy that I run for gifted children. In other words, for mutants.”  
  
He stares straight at David when David’s head snaps up, startled. “You’re not the only one who’s been left with no other choice than to run away, believe me. The world isn’t an entirely—friendly—place for those who are... different, no matter what that difference may entail.”  
  
David knows the professor is talking about his wings, but the man’s eyes don’t flicker towards them at all. Something twists in his chest, and David can feel guilt coming at him from everywhere at once. Being a mutant—it’s not the only thing that’s different about him; that his father wouldn’t approve of. It’s just the only thing he couldn’t hide. He looks down.  
  
“I’m aware,” the professor continues, “that you had an opportunity to take the cure. I’m also aware that you turned it down.”  
  
David shakes his head—in a yes or a no, he’s not sure.  
  
Carly looks surprised when he looks up at her, and she opens her mouth like she’s going to ask something, but then her eyes go a little glassy and she looks at the professor, nodding. David suddenly feels like they’re talking without him, somehow—and then he remembers that they probably are.  
  
“I want you to know, Mr. Archuleta, that no matter your decision, we would accept you here. We will accept you here. It’s not permanent, unless you’d like it to be. But for the time being, I don’t believe you have anywhere else to go? Please, stay here. Go to classes, meet others like us. Learn something, while you’re deciding what to do.”  
  
David wonders idly how the professor knew he was still kind of—well. He misses his dad, and the normalcy he’d had with him there. (But it wasn’t normal, was it, being tied into a coat and hidden in the back of too-large house.) He nods, and says, “I—it’s a school?”  
  
Carly smiles, and this time is the one to speak, “Yeah, David: Simon Fuller’s Academy for Gifted Children.”  
  
 _”—breeding ground for criminals! I won’t have David going to that bastard’s school!”_  
  
David closes his eyes, remembering the half-heard argument that he had watched through the crack between the wall and the door of his father’s office when he was thirteen, and someone in a suit had come to their house, speaking of the x gene—the mutant gene. David had never been allowed to meet them, and when he’d asked after, at dinner, his father had said, “Damn mutant liberals. Don’t mind them, David, we’ll find a cure.”  
  
He’d found the cure.   
  
David just wasn’t sure if he wanted it, after all.  
  
Just as he’s looking up, about to say yes—or no? Yes. Um, probably—there’s a knock on the big wooden door behind them. The professor nods, and even though whoever is on the other side couldn’t possibly see him, it creaks open and David sees a man slip into the room, closing the door behind him. The first thing David notices is the ear buds, one hanging down in front of the man’s chest, and the t-shirt that says  _if you listen to music, you’re a poet_.   
  
He’s grinning, and looks completely ordinary. He’s not reading David’s mind or moving tattoos around on his body—and David can see one there on his arm, but it looks stable, at least—but David isn’t fooled, knows this guy must be a mutant too. (They’re sort of  _all over the place_.) Jason had looked normal too, David thinks, except that he had apologized that he couldn’t show David his power “because growing trees in the hanger would probably not be okay with the professor.”   
  
“Hey Carls, welcome home,” the guy says, first, and then, “Professor.” He turns to David, still grinning, and David slips back on the couch just an inch, looking away. He’s not—how many mutants are—  
  
“David,” the professor says, and David immediately looks up, but so does this new guy, even adding a, “Yeah?”  
  
The professor smiles nicely and says, “Mr. Archuleta, meet one of your professors, Mr. David Cook. David, this is a new student. If you’ll notice, his wing was broken during a fall.”  
  
David nearly laughs when the professor calls this new guy a professor too—and then stops himself, because, well, um, that’s definitely not very nice at all, but he looks—aren’t professors supposed to be  _old?_  He sees the new guy reach over out of the corner of his eye, and even as Carly says, “He doesn’t like being touched!” David jumps up and stumbles backward, a wing getting caught on the chair, and knocking a pencil holder off of the professor’s desk.   
  
“Woah,” the guy says, stopping in his tracks. “Archu—“ he glances at the professor, mouthing  _Archuleta?_  before turning back, eyebrows raised. “Archuleta,” he says, again, and then frowns and says, “David. That wing’s gonna’ hurt like a bitch as soon as the pain meds Carly gave you wear off.”  
  
“She didn’t give me any—“  
  
“Your wing was broken, David,” Carly says. “You’d collapsed from the pain. Of course I gave you something when we picked you up.”  
  
“You  _what?_ ” David says, aghast. They—they  _gave him something_. What if it was—what if it was  _bad_  or—what else could they have done? What else  _did_  they do?  
  
“I understand you’re upset—“ the professor begins, but the new guy interrupts, rolling his eyes. “Kid, your wing? It’s broken. Of course she gave you pain meds. What sort of teachers would we be if we just left you to deal with that? Giving you pain meds was practically required.”  
  
“ _Permission_  is also sort of required,” David replies warily, looking at him unhappily.  
  
“Okay,” he says, “but you were unconscious.”  
  
David kind of wants to throw back  _so?_  but keeps mouth shut. It’s—they sort of have a point, maybe. The thing is, he still doesn’t—he doesn’t know these people, or where they brought him, and he didn’t say it was okay. But his wing is kind of throbbing now, and not just where the bandage is, but all over, a long extended pain, stretching through the nerves.   
  
The guy says, “Alright, while you judge the need for a healing session...” and drops down on the couch, at the other end. “So, you’re a David? I need a nickname.”  
  
“He’ll call you Professor anyway,” Carly says, shaking her head.   
  
He makes a face like he ate something sour and says, “Uh, no. My students call me Cook. I feel old when they call me Professor.” He adds, a moment later, looking at the Professor, “Uh, no offense.”  
  
The Professor chuckles and says, “None taken. I do believe, David, that you are in fact older than myself.”   
  
“What?” David blurts, before shutting his mouth again. There’s no way the Professor is younger than, er, Cook.  
  
Cook looks up at him though, shrugging, “I’ve had a birthday or two.”  
  
David gapes, and then Cook says, “Archuleta’s pretty long. I could go the superhero route and call you ‘Wings’, I guess.”  
  
Carly snorts and David says, “... what?”  
  
“’Angel’ sound better?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Well, I need—“  
  
“I don’t need a nickname!”  
  
“Archie,” Cook says, matter-of-factly.  
  
“No, thank you,” David says back, just as sure.  
  
“Sit the fuck down and let me heal you already, Jesus.”  
  
“I—“ David says, still a little traumatized by the fact that he’s getting a nickname. “Okay,” he says, finally, and sits down, holding his arm out, fully expecting a shot. He doesn’t really know why he’s giving in so easily, but it’s probably that nobody in the room really seems all that dangerous—and when you get down to it, what other choice does he have? Run away with a painful broken wing? What is he supposed to  _do_?  
  
He closes his eyes when he feels the couch move next to him, and then jerks and shuts them tighter when he feels a hand touch his arm, pushing it down until his hand is resting in his lap instead of held up in the air. “Calm down,” Cook says, softly. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”   
  
A long shiver runs down David’s entire body when he feels another hand brush against his wing, and he sucks in his stomach instinctively. His wings tighten themselves close to his body, trying to wrap around him, nervous and unsure. It hurts when they move though; aches, even. He doesn’t remember the last time someone touched his wings without the intention of taking them away. He doesn’t think anyone ever has.   
  
The hand on his wings treads down through the feathers, sliding over the broken bone carefully, and it  _does_  hurt, for a second. But he can feel the bone sliding back in place, and his wing droops down, lying on his back as if it’s exhausted. He can feel his heart beating fast in his chest, and he can hear it pounding quickly. Cook’s hand is warm and soft against his feathers, running through them and healing all along the bones, sliding against the muscle. David can hear him saying something, something soft and gentle, like,  _where are all these scars from?_  but he can’t focus on an answer.  
  
He’s not sure when he falls asleep, but it feels like sleeping on clouds.  
  
  
  
David wakes up, and the first thing he notices is that his wings are spread out underneath him, hanging off both sides of the twin bed he’d slept in. He sits up awkwardly, tugging his wings with him, and looks around the room. There are two beds, two desks, and two end tables next to each bed. There are two doors—one leading out, and one a closet, David thinks, because it’s open, revealing an insane amount of clothes, some piled on the floor and some hanging properly. There’s a poster of some band David doesn’t know on the wall, and when David looks to the window, the sun is bright and shines directly in his eyes, making him wince.   
  
He gets up; his sock-clad feet slide against the wooden floor for a second before his wings snap up and out, helping him balance. He goes to the door that isn’t a closet, and cracks it open to peek out, and try to figure where, um, he is, exactly. It leads into a hallway, a really nice, immaculately clean one, with what looks like really expensive statues and pictures on the walls. There are a couple of kids at the far end, and David jerks back when they start to laugh.   
  
He shuts the door and, glancing back at his wings, starts frantically looking around for something he can use to pull them in; to hide them. He could use a belt—because he doubts whoever this room belongs to has a vest for this sort of thing, but a belt? That’s possible, he thinks. (There are a lot of clothes.) (Then again, he’s having to steal someone else’s clothes. A belt and a jacket, hopefully.)  
  
He has to have something to cover his wings before he can go, whatever, find Carly. Or, um, Cook would probably work too. He just wants to know where he is. Thinking of Cook makes him remember before though, in the professor’s office, when—when warm, coarse fingers slid through his feathers and lulled the bones there into healing. He flushes when he raises his wings, flexing them.  
  
They feel really—good. It’s weird.  
  
He pins his wings in as best as he can underneath his t-shirt, and then puts on one of the room’s owner’s jackets, but whoever it is doesn’t have any big, long ones, so the bottoms of David’s wings are still poking out, and that’s on top of the fact that he looks like a hunchback, sort of, now. He doesn’t feel so good anymore. Maybe he should just wait in the room, it’s not like they’ve just left him forever, right? But what if this other person comes back first?  
  
It’s okay. He can sneak through the hall without anyone seeing his wings, and calling him out on them. He thinks he can, anyway. It occurs to him, as he opens the door again, and steps out slowly, that if this is really a school for mutants, maybe the kid’s out there wouldn’t freak out, if they saw his wings. He doesn’t really want to take the chance. His wings are—  
  
 _Nobody wants to see your wings, David._  
  
The hallway is pretty long, and David manages to avoid any of the other kids that he sees, and keeps his back to the wall, just, um, just in case. He’s barely turned a corner when someone nearly walks into him though, and David jumps backward again, looking up to see, um—  
  
“Archie,” Cook says, grinning, and leaning back against the wall. “Professor said you were roaming.”  
  
“Are we not allowed to, um, roam?” David asks, even though he wasn’t  _roaming_. He was looking for—  
  
Well, he’s not entirely sure what he was looking for. A magic book that would tell him where he is, whose jacket he just borrowed, where his shoes are, what he’s going to do  _next_. That would be a really great thing to find, right about now.  
  
Instead, he gets Cook. The guy he’s pretty sure drugged him or something yesterday, because the last thing David remembers is sitting next to him, and Cook’s hands touching his wings, and—and it feeling really—okay,  _now_  he feels all embarrassed, but he thinks he should be angry, or something. He’s not, really though, because he slept really nicely, and his wings don’t hurt at all except for where he’s pinned them with the two belts he’d found.  
  
Still, how many times is he going to wake up in a weird place this week?  
  
“Nah, you can roam. But maybe you’d like a tour?”  
  
David hunches his shoulders the barest amount, and says, “I sort of borrowed this jacket from whatever room I was in, I—“  
  
“Oh,” Cook says. “We put you in with Danny. I guess you didn’t wake up before class started, so you didn’t get to meet him. He won’t mind about the jacket though.”  
  
David still fidgets, and can feel his wings pressed against his back, all the way down his legs, where they’re visible to anyone who looks. “I’d rather, um, not, without my own jacket, because they—er, my wings? I guess you, um, you saw them yesterday, but they’re like—showing. Kind of. And I—“  
  
“Yeah,” Cook says, sliding behind David quickly. “How’d you cram your big-ass wings inside this tiny little jacket? Danny might get mad if you stretch his—“  
  
“Oh my Gosh, I didn’t mean to—!”  
  
Cook snorts out a laugh though, and puts an arm around David’s shoulders. David ducks and spins out of the way, but not before Cook grabs hold of the jacket and tugs just enough for it to roll off his shoulders, black feathers puffing out from the new free space.  
  
“ _Cook,_ ” David says, alarmed, at the same time that Cook says, “Take the jacket off, Archie, you can show your wings here.”  
  
David stares up at Cook, dumbfounded.  
  
“Archie?” Cook asks, eyes meeting David’s. “You’ve never really worn them out, have you?”  
  
“I—no. They’re—“ David swallows. “They’re big and ugly and  _wrong_. Of course I don’t walk around showing them off or whatever.”  
  
“Woah, woah,” Cook says, a hand moving to grip David’s shoulder, even though David had flinched away a moment ago. “First off? Your wings are epic, alright? And second, we don’t hide our mutations here. You’ll see Lauren soon—she changes color when she’s mad. Allison lights things on fire—typically homework. Danny likes to crowd people. Literally. Trust me kid, wings aren’t going to shock anybody.”  
  
“What about you?” David asks, somewhat meanly. “You look completely normal.”  
  
Cook nods, like he understands, and says, “I’ll grab a post-it and write, ‘Hi, I’m David Cook, I heal people and can’t die,’ and stick it on my forehead if that makes you feel any better.”  
  
David jerks his arm away, but Cook grabs it. “I’m not making fun of you,” he says, his eyes serious. “I’d do it every day if it would help.”  
  
David hesitates, and Cook tightens his grip. It’s not as threatening as David thinks it should be.  
  
“Look, Archie—David. Mutants are human. We just—grew faster. There’s not a damn thing wrong with you, or me, or any of the kids at this school, and I don’t want to hear you say that there is again. Promise me.”  
  
Cook, up until this point, hasn’t looked much like a teacher. Sure, the only real point for comparison David has is his tutor at home, but he’s pretty sure teachers don’t usually have weird hair and unshaven beards and tattoos and necklaces and earphones and say things like  _damn_. But David swallows and nods, because there’s something in Cook’s voice that sounds authoritative, and not in the way that his father’s always had. It isn’t—it isn’t  _I’ll fix you, David, I promise_. It’s  _you’re fine the way you are_.  
  
His eyes sting with the willpower it takes not to cry, but he takes a deep breath and just shrugs off the jacket.  
  
  
  
They don’t make him go to classes on the first day, and Cook walks him through the school, showing him where everything is—from the dorm rooms to the bathrooms to the classrooms he’ll eventually be attending. He’s taken the belts off his wings, and they hover behind him, feeling unsafe and—and out, and in the open. When someone walks through the hallways and comes close enough to actually see him, David ends up backing up against anything and everything, including Cook, once, when the wall was too far away, just to try and hide his wings from view. Cook just laughs at him, and then smiles, like, fondly or something, it’s  _weird_. (Probably because nothing he does can actually hide his wings. He looks over his shoulder, and wonders sadly why they have to be so  _big_.)  
  
His stomach eventually lets out a loud growl, and he flushes red all the way to his toes when Cook looks at him and says, “Uh, when’s the last time you ate?”  
  
To be fair, David’s pretty sure he hasn’t eaten since the day before he was scheduled to take the cure, so, um, he’s pretty hungry. Cook takes him to the kitchen area, which is really nice and big and they get chocolate milk (David does, anyway, Cook gets a soda and gloats that he apparently  _never gets hungry_ , and only eats because food tastes good, oh my gosh) and eat chicken strips while Cook tells him what classes he’ll be taking, starting tomorrow.   
  
David tries not to show the way his heart fumbles in his chest when Cook says, “And I’m your last class, English. Then... let’s go ahead and meet after class. I’ll try to help you get sorted in here. It’s kind of weird at first, I know.”  
  
David nods, and finishes his chicken strips, and tries to ignore the way Cook is smiling at him, like he’s positive everything’s going to be great. Something pulls at his stomach, and David can’t help but hope he doesn’t disappoint him.  
  
  
  
After that, they go back to the dorm and David meets Danny. Or, um, the Danny’ _s_ , because, well, there are three of him. Them.  
  
“Hey, kid!” One of them yells, and another says, “The new guy!” while another spins in the desk chair and says, “And the new roommate arrives~” with this like, weird sing-song sort of voice and David just stares. All three guy’s stare back at him, and then look to each other, and then to Cook behind David, and then they sigh, like, consecutively and the one in the desk and the one sitting on the end of the bed sort of—there’s a swoosh noise and funny light and they like— _go into_  the Danny whose standing up, and reaching a hand out as if he wants to shake David’s.  
  
“Hi, I’m Danny. I duplicate. And gossip.”  
  
“Um,” David says, rapidly trying to come up with something to say. “I’m David. I... fly?”  
  
Danny’s face splits into a grin, and he whistles, and reaches forward to touch David’s wings while saying, “I can  _see_  that—“  
  
“Danny!” Cook says, and David realizes it’s his teacher-voice. “Don’t touch someone without their permission.”  
  
Danny rolls his eyes but backs up, and Cook turns to David. “You gonna’ be alright for the night?”  
  
David looks back at Danny, whose split back into three people. Weakly, he asks, “Yes?”  
  
For all his worrying, Danny isn’t really scary at all. He talks a lot—mostly to himself—literally to himself—and when he does ask David questions, he typically answers them himself or only lets David get out a few words before saying, “Oh, yeah! I know what you mean!” and then giving some example of, um, how he knows what David means, even though David’s pretty sure that’s not what he meant at all.  
  
David conspicuously puts his roommate’s jacket and belts back where he’d found them after Danny finally huddles into bed—maybe three bodies are warmer than one?—and goes to sleep. David slides into bed himself, and adjusts his wings so that they’re wrapped around him, before closing his eyes. He tries to sleep, but ends up staring at the ceiling with long thoughts, swirling through his head. Most of them are about his dad, and what he must be doing; what he must be thinking of David right now.  
  
Then again, David doesn’t even know what to be thinking of himself right now.  
  
There’s a knock on the door, a short, quiet one, and David scoots back against his pillow, before it creaks open.  
  
“Hey,” someone says, and it’s a man’s voice. “Lights out means going to sleep.”  
  
“Sorry,” David whispers, hesitantly.  
  
“Oh,” the man says. “You’re new, aren’t you?”  
  
Feeling awkward, David nods, and then says, “Yeah, um—David. Are you, um...”  
  
“I’m Kris Allen. I’ll see you in math tomorrow. Go to sleep, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” David says, and settles back in after Mr. Allen (he’s pretty sure that was a teacher, anyway) shuts the door. This time, he forces himself to think of nothing but how it felt to fly, miles and miles above the ground, and falls asleep within minutes.  
  
  
  
David quickly realizes that his wings have this bad habit of like, um, flinging themselves around while he talks. Well, he knew that, he just never had to worry about it before? It’s just—he can’t help it! It didn’t use to be a problem, because they were always held down, but here, at the school... well, Cook insisted that he have them out. And so David (and everyone around him) is realizing that his wings  _totally have a mind of their own_.   
  
Anyway, so it’s not technically, um, his fault that he hits Cook when he’s turning around, and knocks him on the ground in front of basically every student in the entire school. Or, well, every student in the classroom, anyway. Really, not his fault at all. He still spins, cringes, and thinks  _Great way to make a good impression!_  He starts to say, “I’m so sorry—“ before Cook laughs and stands up, and holds up the hand he’d landed on.   
  
“Don’t worry; it takes more than that to hurt me.”  
  
“Good try though,” a girl says. David looks at her, and recognizes her from one of the other classes he’d had that morning. It’s hard not to miss the bright red hair and the, um, scorch marks. “I’m Allison,” she says, smiling brightly. “I’m in your abilities class too. With Adam?”  
  
“You mean Mr. Lambert?” David asks, even though he knows that’s the class she’s talking about. It’s the one where they, well, apparently get help learning how to use their abilities, or mutations, anyway. There’s a boy in that class who has the ability to run around the world in like sixty seconds. Or something like that, anyway, he’d demonstrated by grabbing another teacher’s guitar instantaneously, and then five minutes later Mr. Allen had pushed his way into the room and said, “Adam, where’s my—I was trying to  _teach_  with that.”  
  
“Yep,” Allison says, “but we call him Adam.”  
  
“Alright, alright,” Cook says, clapping his hands together, and the dozen-or-so kids in the room move to sit on the floor. Allison grabs David’s hand and pulls him down next to her before he can even think to move away.   
  
  
  
David told Ashley he had wings when they were still small enough to sort of hide, small things that couldn't have lifted him in the air no matter much they tried. She'd never talked to him again.  
  
Danny and Allison and Jordin—they sneak into his room on his third night there and drag him down to the kitchens where they sit around talking and eating ice cream until Mr. Allen and Mr. Lambert come down (to do, um, the same thing, so that's kind of hypocritical when they send David and everyone else back to bed. Not that David says that).   
  
When is the last time he'd actually had a friend? David can't sleep for the rest of the night, lying awake instead, listening to Danny roll around on the other side of the room.   
  
  
  
David doesn’t like the rain very much. He’s never really had to be in it for long, and he’d had a big coat he could use to shield out the wetness if he did. But here, one of the classes is about learning how to use your mutations—control them. And that means David gets to fly. In every weather condition imaginable. He really dislikes the rain though. It’s cold and wet and windy and makes his wings soggy and heavy. He crash lands again, tearing two dark red abrasions from his hand and elbow. He winces through the pain and finishes his cycle before Mr. Lambert says, “Alright, you’re good. Go clean up.”  
  
He tries to shake the mud off his shoes and wings and shirt before trudging through the halls, and without really thinking about it, he goes to Cook’s room. Cook showed him where he stayed on that first day, during the tour, just in case he ever needed something. He thinks, well, he’s bleeding pretty bad, and it, um, it hurts, so this must be what Cook was talking about. He knocks on the door hesitantly, and then looks up when Cook pulls it open from the other side, dressed in sweats with messy hair and dark-rimmed glasses.   
  
“Oh,” David says, horrified. Had he just  _woken Cook up?_  
  
“What’s up?” Cook asks, looking down David’s torso, seeing the mud and dirt and eyes stopping on David’s arm, bleeding and scraped. David clenches his hand and holds his arm out a little.  
  
“Can you, um—can you heal me?” It sounds weird, out loud. And it’s a little embarrassing, too, but Cook just smiles and nods and steps back, saying, “’Course, Archie. Come on in,” before yawning.  
  
“I’m sorry for waking you up,” David mutters, moving to stand in the middle of the room. It’s just another dorm room, just like the one he shares with Danny. Except Cook’s room—Cook’s room only has, um, the one bed. A bigger one, too, than the twin-size ones in the student dorms.  
  
“Sit down,” Cook says, sitting down on the bed, knocking a piece of paper lined with red markings off of it. “And don’t worry, I wasn’t sleeping.”  
  
“What were you doing?”  
  
David flushes when Cook looks up at him, one eyebrow raised. After a second, Cook glances over to the desk, where papers are strewn around, all with messy handwriting and red markings. “I was grading papers. I think the more important question, Archuleta, is what the hell were you doing?” He looks up and down David’s body again, clearly indicating the mud dripping on his carpet.  
  
“Um, Mr. Lambert’s—“  
  
“Oh, right, weather conditioning,” Cook says, nodding almost to himself. “Well, sit down so I can take care of that scrape on your arm. Looks like it stings.”  
  
“But, um, I’m all—muddy,” David says, his wings ruffling behind him, instinctively trying to shake more mud off. David’s trying to hold them back though, it’s, um, he doesn’t want to leave mud all over Cook’s room. (They’re heavy and drooping though, and the mud is grainy and gross and sliding between his feathers and skin, and—well.)  
  
“Yeah, I could care less.” Cook reaches up and tugs David down. Cook turns and reaches up with both hands, clasping them around David’s arm where the blood is still gathering. David’s heart thumps awkwardly in his chest, the slow sensation swallowing his arm whole. It’s achingly good, like all the tension is melting off of him. He barely notices when Cook slides his hands away from the now-healed skin of his forearm and back, instead, to his shoulders, running over them smoothly and slipping his hands down, tracing his fingers through David’s wings. It feels incredible, and David finds himself closing his eyes and leaning forward without any real thought to it.  
  
He wants it to keep going forever.   
  
Cook coughs, and pulls his hands away, and says, “Feeling better?”  
  
David opens his eyes, and looks up at Cook. “Yeah.”

 

 

 

“So,” Carly says—although really, she’s supposed to be called Mrs. Smithson, but she gets kind of, um, angry when students call her that, so, um, yeah, “you can see the moral responsibility involved in humans going behind one-another’s backs to change results in things like political votes. Why should that be different for mutants?”  
  
“Because,” Danny (the second one) says, rolling his eyes, “we have more opportunity to do it than they do.”  
  
David doesn’t think before speaking, because it’s something he’s known all his life, really—having wings doesn’t make it any easier to steal cookies from the kitchen, and it definitely doesn’t make the glare his father sends him afterwards any easier to bear (although this is talking about stuff more important than, like, cookies)—and he says, “That’s not right.”  
  
Carly crosses her arms at the front of the room, and the entire class is looking at him. “That’s not—that’s not what we’re talking about,” he swallows. “Morally, people choose not to break into banks because it’s wrong. Just because it would be easier for someone whose invisible doesn’t mean it’s any more  _moral_. It’s not right because of the ending conclusion—you taking something that isn’t yours. It has nothing to do with how you do it.”  
  
“What if humans do it though, David?” Carly asks, calmly. “Take the political example. Two candidates—a human and a mutant. The human has made it so that three-fourths’ of the votes people cast for the mutant actually count for him instead; is it moral for the mutant to take control of the remaining voters’ minds and have them vote for him?”  
  
David frowns, and shakes his head. “Just because someone steals from you doesn’t mean its right to steal from them back.”  
  
“And that,” Carly says, “is a very hopeful stance on the matter, but the correct one, I suppose. Let’s all strive to it. Class dismissed.”  
  
It’s early for class to be over, and David bites his lip as dark storm clouds climb up the teacher’s shoulders, turning her neck almost entirely grey. He waits for the other students to leave, hesitating over his bag, and approaches her slowly. “Um, Ms.—um, Carly?”  
  
“Yeah, David?” she asks, smiling grimly.   
  
“Are you alright?” It feels like a stupid question, but he doesn’t know what else to ask.  
  
She gives a large sigh, and nods, but it looks like it’s an exhausted movement. “Morality is a sensitive topic, kid. Let’s just say I wasn’t as nice as you when I was younger. Go on, get out of here.” As David turns to leave, she adds, “Oh, and if you see Johns, tell him to come find me, alright?”  
  
  
  
“Wait,” Danny says, looking at David from where he’s playing cards with Allison and Lauren. “You get to go to the mall? Why don’t we—“  
  
“Because you have clothes,” Mr. Lambert says, from where he’s standing by Mr. Allen at the door to David and Danny’s dorm room. He looks sad too though, and looks at Mr. Allen when he says, “just like me.”  
  
Mr. Allen snorts and says, “No, you’re not going because you’ll spend his entire budget on clothes he’ll never wear.” David is actually really glad, as he grabs his jacket off his desk chair, that Mr. Allen is the one taking him to the mall. Mr. Lambert would—well, David’s just pretty sure they don’t have similar taste in, like, jeans.  
  
David can’t pull off leather.   
  
Or glitter.  
  
“Alright, David,” Mr. Allen says, “Dave’ll meet you in the garage. Or, well, by the elevator, you’ll need him to get in the actual garage. He’s just grabbing the credit card from the professor.”  
  
“Oh,” David says, surprised. His wings shift behind him. “Cook’s taking me?”  
  
Mr. Allen nods, but looks kind of... weird. “Yeah, he insisted.”  
  
Even though Mr. Allen looks kind of unhappy, and Adam is still bickering with Danny over something, David has to try and keep the happiness off of his face. (According to Allison and Lauren’s sudden rupture of laughter, he fails, but whatever, he’s going to the mall with Cook! It could maybe even almost count as a date if David thought about things like that.)  
  
  
  
It’s a two hour drive to the mall, and they’re silent most of it, weirdly, but it’s not a weird silent, because Cook’s iPod is hooked up to his car, and it’s playing songs that range from Metallica to Led Zeppelin to Katy Perry and Sara Bareilles, so. David starts singing along when  _iLove Song_  plays, and Cook grins, which makes David blush and shut up really fast, except then Cook sings along really loudly too, and they’re like, two guys singing loudly to Sara Bareilles’  _Love Song_  on a road trip, and it’s really fun and awesome. David is even kind of disappointed when they get to the mall, even though his wings are scrambling for the room that the open air will provide.  
  
He has one foot out the door before he thinks about it, jerks back and slams the door again, with him on the inside of it. He can’t get out of the car. It’s one thing to walk around the school with his wings—Lauren walks around blue, and Allison sometimes has fire in her hair, and James has a tail, but—but this is the mall! He can’t—he can’t—he can’t  _breathe_ , how did he not think about—  
  
“David,” Cook says, pulling open his door and clapping his hands on David’s shoulders, forcing him to look up into Cook’s eyes, silvery blue and sharp. “It will be fine. I promise.”  
  
David pulls back, and yells, “You can’t promise anything! You don’t know them! I  _can’t_ , Cook, I  _can’t_. I’m sorry, I can’t do that, I can’t do it. I can’t—“  
  
Maybe it’s the way he yells, or the way he’s practically hyperventilating, or the way he’s trying to shrink, as far away from Cook as possible, but Cook looks at him, and after a long moment, says, “Fuck. Fine. Stay here.”  
  
David’s wings try to encircle him as best they can in the confined space of the front seat, and his chest hurts, suddenly, because now what? He’s just going to sit here until Cook comes back, and takes him back to the school, and then—what then? Will Cook even care about him at all? He’s such a  _coward_ , and he wants to get out of the car, he  _wants_  to, but he can’t, there are people all around the parking lot, middle-aged women holding their children’s hands, teenagers on skateboards and older men walking to their cars with canes. They’re all  _normal_ , and if David gets out of the car, he’ll be like a black splatter of ink all over a white canvas.  
  
He can’t do that.  
  
Cook pulls open the door suddenly, and David tries to move further down in his seat again. He hadn’t even realized Cook was back. “Alright,” Cook says, “come on, you have to get out long enough to put the jacket on. You won’t be able to do it in the car no matter how hard you try.”  
  
He’s holding up a big coat, a really long one, black with lots of buttons and—and—“Oh my gosh,” David says, because Cook got him a jacket to hide his wings under. Even though David  _knows_  Cook hates the idea of hiding mutations, and thinks David should walk around the mall with them all—all out, and proud, and—  
  
He got David a coat. David breathes, nods, and pushes his way out of the car.   
  
There’s a little girl who walks past right then, and David flinches when she yells, “Angel! Mama! Look, there’s an angel!” Cook just laughs at him as David rips the coat out of Cook’s hands and throws it over his back, covering his wings as best he can.  
  
  
  
“—and then, Lauren turns  _red as a fucking tomato_!” Allison yells, laughing loudly, almost like one of the hyena’s from the Lion King (although David won’t tell her that, um, it’s kind of rude, but, well, she does, all falling backward and gasping for breath and, yeah).  
  
“Allison!” Lauren yells, her eyes wide and her skin darkening to an even more contrasty-sort-of-pink, and she flails her arms kind of the same way David does. David feels really bad for her, and is once again glad that he doesn’t change color according to how he’s feeling. “It’s not funny! Scotty thinks I’m some sort of crazy—“  
  
Jordin reaches over to touch her fingers to Allison’s hair, short-circuiting the fire starting there, and says, “And obviously Allison is the crazy one here.”  
  
“Hey,” Danny interrupts, “but in all seriousness, what happened then? I mean, did Mr. Deep Voice do anything?”   
  
Lauren snorts and falls backward, and now she looks a little green. Allison is still laughing and can’t answer (although she’s trying) and so David says, “He opened the window, because he thought it meant she felt hot.”  
  
Danny starts laughing madly and slides over to crash into Allison, and they both just start laughing harder.   
  
“Well,” Jordin says, smiling, “at least Lauren has an excuse for turning red around Scotty every time he starts talking.  _David_ —“  
  
“Oh my God,” Danny says, lifting up quickly before David can protest the change in topic, “so the other day Cook was totally hitting on David  _in the middle of class_  and I swear David was like, going to have a heart-attack right then and there—“  
  
“Oh my Gosh, I was not!” David yells, and then as an afterthought, “and he wasn’t hitting on me!”  
  
“Cook is pretty touchy-feely with everyone,” Allison remarks, finally breathing normally again. “Adam says he can’t leave him and Kris alone for more than five minutes or he’ll come back to some sort of orgy.”  
  
Danny snorts and Jordin giggles with Lauren, who says, “Nah, he wouldn’t cheat on David like that.”  
  
“That’s what I said!” Allison agrees, and then they go all  _yay, high-five_ , even as David is protesting that entire, like, sentence. They’re just doing it to make him all uncomfortable or whatever.  
  
“Please,” Danny says, waving a hand in front of David’s face. “You have such a big damn crush on that teacher; I don’t even know how I haven’t woke up to you getting one off while yelling his name, okay.”  
  
“ _Ew,_  Danny,” Lauren says, while David stares at him in horror.  
  
“Stating a fact!” Danny says, pushing an arm up in the air when Allison throws a pillow at him.  
  
She puts an arm around David’s shoulders and says, “It’s okay, David. I used to have a crush on Adam.  _That_  is embarrassing.”  
  
“I don’t have a crush on Cook,” David tries, one last time, weakly.  
  
“Aw,” they all say at the same time. David wants to climb under his sheets and hide. His wings fold over his shoulders, hiding his face from view, and the  _aw_ s just get louder.  
  
  
  
“If I catch you playing video games but your homework isn’t done tomorrow—“ Cook says loudly as everyone shuffles up from the floor, grabbing their bags and books as they get ready to leave the last class of the day. David usually stays seated, waiting for everyone else to leave, and then he and Cook have their afternoon discussion—well, mostly they just sit around laughing and talking about music, but yeah. Sometimes David will ask for help on an assignment he doesn’t understand? And Cook will lean over and look at his paper, and get kind of close, like enough that his chest pushes against David’s wing, and it’ll be really warm. But anyway, um, David’s not doing that today, because he’s positive that he doesn’t have a crush on Cook, okay, and even if he did  _like_  him, it’s not like it matters. Cook is his  _teacher_. Clearly, his friends are crazy.  
  
He slips out in-between James and Alexandria, his wings huddled closely so as to not knock anyone over on his way out. (It’s happened, um, once or twice. Everyone has been really nice about it though!) He practically runs to the exit doors down the hallway, wanting to get out of direct visibility because he sort of thinks Cook might look for him? Just because they normally do hang out after class, so, it would be a natural reaction. But also a natural reaction is not thinking about what your English teacher’s beard might feel like (it’s just—it’s probably scratchy, not soft, but it  _looks_  soft, and—um), when you’re supposed to be figuring out what  _x_  is in relation to 2 + 2 or whatever, and Mr. Allen is staring down at you with a bemused smile, like he knows exactly what you’re doing.  
  
David makes it outside, and sits down on the cobbled stone surrounding one of the little flower patches that the school has all over the grounds, sighing. It doesn’t really take that long for someone to find him, but at least it isn’t Danny, who would just, like, tease him about hiding.  
  
“David,” a thick country accent says, and David flips around. Scotty puts his hands up defensively, grinning with his head cocked to the side. “Didn’t mean to make you jump.”  
  
“Oh, er, that’s—that’s just kind of what I do?” David says, laughing a little awkwardly. He’s never really talked to Scotty before, except that one time when Danny was bugging him (trying to find out if he liked Lauren) (which backfired because Lauren came in the cafeteria and saw them) (and turned an angry black color that David is kind of hoping to never see on her ever again).  
  
“I see that,” Scotty says, still grinning. “Hey, you’re friends with Lauren, right? Is she okay?”  
  
David blinks, because he’d seen her that morning and she seemed fine. “Yes?” he asks, forehead wrinkling.  
  
“She was all—blue, in math today, ‘ya know? I was worried, but she took off too quick for me to ask.”  
  
“Oh,” David says, unsure. “She must have been sad about something.”  
  
Scotty nods, not grinning anymore. “I have to go study for the politics exam but tell her I hope she feels better, alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” David says, pretty sure that if Lauren was blue, it would probably have been Scotty’s fault anyway.  
  
“Oh, and hey—you didn’t skip English, did you? Cook was looking for you.”  
  
“What?” David asks weakly, before nodding his head in mock-agreement as Scotty tells him he should go find out what’s up. David  _knows_  what’s, um, up with Cook. (His student totally ditched their studying session and he’s probably all, like, worried, like a good teacher, and David is hiding out for reasons that wouldn’t have ever even occurred to Cook, because—because David likes Cook, okay, he knows that, he’s not  _stupid_ , but, no way does Cook like him back.)  
  
He manages to stay outside for a while, and ends up migrating to the ground to read the book Cook assigned them—the Great Gatsby (which is really boring)—before the sky gets darker and the air gets colder, and David decides it’s probably close enough to dinner time that he should go to the cafeteria already. Plus if he hides outside for much longer he’ll end up getting a cold or something (even though his wings keep instinctively acting like a jacket).  
  
When he walks in the cafeteria, someone he doesn’t know shoves him on their way out. They laugh meanly, and David hunches back, confused. Why—  
  
“Dick!” Allison yells, coming up next to him just then. “Just because Jordin turned your sorry ass down doesn’t mean you can go shoving people around!”  
  
“What the hell, am I getting told off by a fire ant?” the guy says, turning around and taking a step back towards them. David tries to shrink back a little, but Allison moves forward, and she’s wrapped an arm in his so he has to go with her.   
  
“You wanna’ test me, Brown? What’s your power again? Pulling piggy tails?”  
  
“You’ll fucking see my power, Iraheta,” the guy says, and when he lifts a hand, there’s a brightly lit shock of what looks like electricity burning between his fingers.   
  
“Oy, what’s going on here, Chris, Allison— _David?_ ” Mr. Johns says, coming around the corner, his voice going deeper when he says  _David_ , and David flinches at the surprise in the tone. He doesn’t  _like_  fighting, he wasn’t even, really, like, involved, and oh gosh, Allison is totally going to get him in trouble.  
  
“Tell Iraheta to keep her claws in,” Chris says, folding his hands.  
  
“Keep your face in, Brown,” Allison mutters, just loud enough that Chris can’t hear it as he walks away, and if Mr. Johns didn’t have  _super hearing_  he probably wouldn’t have been able to either. Luckily though, Mr. Johns totally loves Allison and just laughs and tells them to stop fighting and go eat dinner.  
  
“Oh, Archie,” Mr. Johns adds, before David can leave, “Dave’s looking for you.”  
  
Allison puts an arm around his shoulder walking into the cafeteria, grinning as she says, “What a surprise!”  
  
  
  
Jordin gives him a sharp poke in his side, between his wing and his arm, when during English a few days later, Cook says, “Archie, stay after class, alright? I need to talk to you.” David spends the whole lesson fidgeting and his wings keep ruffling of their own accord, moving and getting in the way. What is Cook going to say? Something about skipping class leading to a life of crime, maybe, although his after-class sessions shouldn’t really count. It’s just, skipping them is probably really  _rude_  of David, and, um, he doesn’t want to hear Cook tell him that, because the alternative of like, whatever, crushing on Cook without permission is  _so much more rude_. It’s kind of like—you can’t imagine somebody naked without permission! That’s not okay! That’s—David wouldn’t want anyone doing it to  _him_ , and—not that he imagines Cook naked, like, ever, it’s just, sometimes, like, Cook’s hands are all warm and rough and slide all the way down his wings and it’s  _hard_  not to imagine things, okay!?  
  
“Alright,” Cook says, still a good ten minutes away from when class should be out, “get out of here, go. And there is to be no complaining I never did anything for you.”  
  
David tries to get up, but Jordin gives him a look and he sits back down. Gosh dang it.  
  
His feet tap against the floor as all the other students file out of the room, and he turns his head down when the door closes. “So, Archie,” Cook says, slowly and from the front of the classroom, “you going to tell me what’s going on?”  
  
“I just,” David says, carefully, “didn’t feel the need to have, um, after-class meetings anymore? It’s not like we actually study or anything.”  
  
“I thought you liked them,” Cook says, and David looks up. Cook’s face is set, looks calm and curious, not hurt or disappointed or angry or anything of the sort. It almost annoys David, that Cook apparently doesn’t even care, and he’s been all worried, and stuff.  
  
“Well, maybe I don’t,” David tries, and while maybe it isn’t quite as, um, scoffy as he was going for, it’s still really mean and he feels bad right away. Cook just cracks a smile though, and raises an eyebrow, like  _oh, really?_  
  
“Oh my gosh,” David says, and stands up. “If you’re just going to stand there and like, mock me—or not believe me—or whatever you’re doing!—I’m just going to go. I have homework for other classes, you know, I can’t just, like, waste all my time with you.”  
  
“Archie, come on,” Cook says, coming forward and touching David’s arm. “You’re the one not being honest here.”  
  
“Stop touching me! I don’t need to be healed right now!” David says, trying to pull his arm back, but Cook just hangs on tighter.  
  
“Maybe I’m not touching you to heal you,” Cook says, slowly. “What if I just thought it was—“ David stares back, and Cook pulls back his hand, covering his face instead. “I don’t know how to explain this without sounding like a creep,” Cook mumbles into his palms.  
  
Cook starts talking into his hand, little mumbles that maybe Mr. Johns would be able to hear, but David can’t even hope to understand. He watches Cook for a minute, and his heart flutters in tune with the feathers on his wings, barely suspended and hoping things they  _aren’t allowed to be hoping_. Sucking in a deep breath, David lifts a hand to touch Cook’s, and gently pries it away from his face. His eyes are bright and silvery and staring right back into David’s brown ones. It’s almost strange, really, how piercing they are. David’s never stared into them like this—has never stared into anybody’s eyes like this. He’s always ducked away from confrontation, from questions and comments and glances in hallways.   
  
It’s terrifying to not look away, but he’s frozen, suddenly, and can’t even think about looking anywhere else; can’t even think about blinking, or licking his lips, or fidgeting. “Archie,” Cook says, finally, breaking the silence, and a hand slides up David’s arm, warm and cupping into his neck, his thumb tracing David’s jaw line like he’s memorizing the edge of it, in case he never gets to touch it again.  
  
David forces his eyes closed as Cook leans in, and holds his breath until he feels the gentle pressure of lips pushing against his, and all he can think is that it’s hot and warm and damp and chapped and perfect and amazing and oh my gosh, over. His eyes open again, and everything’s a little fuzzy around the edges, from the windows to the desks to Cook’s face, hovering a few inches away. Cook isn’t quite looking into David’s eyes, because he’s kind of—staring more at David’s lips, he thinks. Not that David can say anything, because he doesn’t know where to look either, Cook’s eyes or mouth or chin or the way he’s licking his lips, and, oh, um, maybe that, actually, except he really just wants to—he leans forward and kisses Cook again. His wings push up and almost try to fold in, like they’re trying to grab Cook or something, but Cook pushes back and kisses just as hard and David doesn’t even care what his wings are doing anymore.  
  
  
  
So, um, as it turns out, kissing Cook was pretty easy, and, um, really nice. They ended up just laughing and then kissing and then laughing some more and David maybe flailed a little but Cook made sure he didn’t break anything, so, that was okay. And then David had gone back to his room and managed to get in bed before Danny could like, figure out where he’d been for the past however long he’d been with Cook. It had to have been a few hours or something, he thinks, and then covers his mouth to pretend like he’s coughing, but actually, he’s sort of, um, giggling, at the idea of kissing Cook for  _hours_.  
  
Allison blinks up at him from the other side of the room suddenly, where she’s still tugging on her abilities gear. David sobers and flexes his wings, making sure none of the feathers are caught in the leather of the jacket the school makes him wear for abilities classes.   
  
One of the Danny’s to David’s left raises his eyebrows, and another to his right asks, “Were you just  _giggling?_ ”  
  
Before David can answer, Mr. Lambert comes in the room and says, “Time to go, giant robots are attacking!” with a grin. The silver-metal room sort of—waves, next to them and above them and below them, and it’s suddenly a broken down old parking lot, with dirt and rain and Allison slips in the mud below her feet before anything can even attack them. David’s wings are really good at helping him balance, sometimes, whipping out when he needs them.   
  
The simulation chamber, David will admit, is awesome. It can be anything Mrs. Smithson wants it to be, without being dangerous at all, because she alters the fabrications of reality so that no matter how far they run, they never hit a wall—unless it’s one Mrs. Smithson intentionally put there, anyway. Her and the Professor came up with it, somehow. Ordinarily, Mrs. Smithson’s powers can’t physically alter things—she can’t make a solid wall, only a wall that you’ll fall through if you try to lean against it. But something about this room is different, and David isn’t sure why, but it’s awesome.  
  
The giant robot Mr. Lambert had been talking about is like that—it’s technically not real, but it’ll feel like it is if it hits them, and its kind, of, um, right there. “Seriously,” Danny asks again, four of him running in opposite directions even as one of them stays put right next to David. “You were  _giggling_.”  
  
“I wasn’t—“ he breaks off, quickly beating his wings and shooting up into the sky, to the right, gripping Lauren tightly around the waist; a heap of flying metal lands where she’d been standing a moment before, and she looks at him with a relieved sigh.  
  
Another Danny sidles up to them as Allison jumps up, shooting flames out at the robot from one side, and Jordin pressuring it with wind from the other side. It looks like it’s going to fall any minute. “I am not believing that. You didn’t come back to the dorm until crazy late, and you stayed after with Cook. Jordin told me.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Lauren blurts, “did you actually tell him you—“  
  
Bright red, David takes off in flight, leaving them both on the ground. He hears Danny yell, “Oh my God, he  _did_!” as he flies farther away, towards the battle. Mr. Lambert is standing a little ways off, and looks like he’s about to go tell Danny and Lauren to get into the fight. The robot is dangerously close to stepping on Jordin. She’s caught between it and a pile of burning debris, so David does the only thing he can think of from this far up—he flies directly into it, blinding it with the many black feathers covering his overly-large wings. Danny is at its feet a moment later (like thirty of him, actually), pushing at it to try and make it lose its balance. He’s trying to avoid the gigantic, robotic hands trying to grab him and push him off its face when hears Lauren yell, “David, on its stomach!”  
  
He slips down, dodging a questing hand, and kicks the round piece of metal embedded on its abdomen, knocking it loose until it falls to the ground. The robot stops, stumbles, and comes to a heavy pause. In a burst of heavy flames, it explodes, and as David throws himself backward to escape the heat, the room fades back into the way it normally looks, not a stray fire in sight, not even on Allison.  
  
“Not bad,” Mr. Allen says, nodding as he walks up to stand next to Mr. Lambert. “Except how you three—“ he looks at David, Lauren and Danny—“were letting Allison and Jordin do all the work while you gossiped in a corner.”  
  
“Speaking of which,” Danny says, loudly, “David confessed his undying love to you-know-who!”  
  
“I did  _not_ —!” Archie protests even as the girls all burst into loud questions and  _oh my god_ ’s.  
  
Mr. Lambert looks like he’s about to jump in the conversation as well before Mr. Allen grabs him and says, “Adam,” warningly.   
  
“Class is over, guys,” Mr. Lambert says, apologetically. “Take this elsewhere.”  
  
‘Elsewhere’ being in the hallway as they all pull off the abilities leathers.  
  
“Did you really tell him though, David?” Allison asks, and she looks so genuinely happy for him that he blushes and looks at the ceiling.  
  
“It was—I didn’t confess my undying love,” David corrects. Then, a little nervously, he says, “But I, um, maybe kissed him.”  
  
“You did  _not_!” Allison yells, practically jumping on him, wrapping her arms around his neck.  
  
Danny is clapping, and says, “Congratulations! I thought you’d be a virgin forever.”  
  
Lauren turns pink and says, loudly in a hush sort-of-way, “You didn’t sleep with him?”  
  
David jerks backwards and yells, “No!” at the same time as Jordin’s, “That would be illegal, Laur.”  
  
“So?” Danny says, contemplating. “It’s not like we’d tell on him. And it’s like, what, three months? Four?”  
  
Allison interjects, “But Cook could get arrested anyway. I mean, they look for any reason to pick mutants up—can you imagine the bad press if a teacher was found sleeping with an underage student? That’d be—“  
  
“We’re not sleeping together!” David says, fisting his hands. “If you guys would just  _listen_. All we did is kiss! I don’t even know if we’re like, dating, or whatever.”  
  
“Well, you have my approval if you decide to go for it,” Danny grins, but the girls are all frowning, less sure. David agrees more with them anyway. He’s not  _sleeping_  with anybody.  
  
“He kissed back, David?” Jordin asks, after a moment. Lauren and Allison are looking at him, and David fidgets with his sleeve.  
  
“He actually, um, kissed me. First. But it was just—“ they look dubious, like they’d never really expected David to start a romantic relationship with his teacher. Which, to be fair,  _he_  certainly hadn’t either. He trails off, “—just spur of the moment, kind of. I, um, really like him, you guys.”  
  
After a second, Allison smiles, and puts and arm around his shoulders as best she can without pushing on his wings, which ruffle at the intrusion on their space. “Okay. It’s not that we disapprove. It’s just kind of—you’re walking the line and we don’t want you to get hurt.”  
  
David nods. “I know.”  
  
  
  
David keeps quiet out of self-preservation when he follows Lauren and Danny and everybody else outside a few days later, including Haley, who has this thing—like it’s actually her mutation, this ability—to make people tell her whatever she wants, and David thinks that is the worst power ever, he never wants to be alone with her  _ever_. She’d find out about Cook and him in two seconds flat.  
  
They stop at an empty table and Lauren drops her books on it, but doesn’t sit down—she’s glowing a little, kind of white-pink, maybe? and smiling at something a little ways off. David looks to see what it is, guessing already that it’s probably—  
  
“Move over, Miss Rainbow,” Chris says, and pushes Lauren’s books off the table before sitting down at the table with a bunch of his friends.   
  
“Hey!” Danny yells (three times over), and Lauren turns a bright pink instead as she drops her face from whoever she’d been looking at, and drops to the ground to grab her books. David jumps over to lean down and help her pick them up, and tries to ignore the look Chris gives him, and the way he adds, “Surprised any of them are still here with a free ticket to the cure maker’s kid,” clearly talking to his friends.  
  
Allison curses and looks like she’s about to have words with him, except—  
  
“Brown,” Haley says with her voice going all growly, “this table was taken. Apologize and  _move_.”  
  
Chris completely ignores her though, and keeps talking to his friends. For a second, David thinks Haley is going to hit him or something—she looks really, um, mad, but Lauren grabs her hand and says, “It’s okay, let’s get another table. Like, away from here, if that’s okay.” She’s still brightly lit, all pink, and David thinks she just wants to get away from where Scotty can still see her. David wouldn’t mind sitting somewhere nice and far away either though.  
  
The corners of Haley’s mouth soften a little, like her anger is leaving already. She shoots a look at Chris before saying, “Yeah, alright.”   
  
“Excuse me,” comes the familiar noise of Scotty’s southern accent, and David can see Lauren freeze up and turn white, “I think somebody owes somebody an apology here.”  
  
“Don’t even start with me, McQueery,” Chris says, actually looking up this time. “We have abilities together. You really think you can take me?”  
  
Scotty makes a face, and it sort of reminds David of Daniel’s face when you used to tell him he had to clean up the mess he’d made, all annoyed but resigned to it anyway. Scotty sighs and looks back at Lauren, and says, “Better stay behind me, sweetheart,” (Allison snorts into Lauren’s shoulder as Lauren turns a deep red color all the way to the tips of her  _hair_ ), and then Scotty turns back to Chris, who’s getting up already.  
  
David isn’t sure when it happened, but somehow they’re all surrounded by a bunch of the other kids now, and they’re all chanting what sounds like  _fight, fight, fight_. David suddenly remembers why he liked private tutors.  
  
“Come on then, Scotty, yell at me,” Chris says, lifting his hands up, letting the electric current run from hand to hand.   
  
“Don’t complain when you’ve lost your hearing,” Scotty says, country twang stronger than ever as he lazily rolls his eyes and twists his neck, before he opens his mouth and starts to yell.  
  
David can’t lift his hands fast enough to cover his ears, it’s  _piercing_ , and it hurts because it’s so loud, like a stereo at top volume with earphones in. His wings spread open instantaneously, and they knock three people over who are standing behind him. They start to beat behind him dangerously, like he’s getting ready to take flight or something, except he isn’t. It’s just  _so loud_.  
  
And then it’s over, and Mrs. Brooke and Mr. Castro are pushing through kids on one side, and Chris is on the ground clutching his ears (and they’re covered in something red, which can’t be—can’t be good—) and cursing at Scotty, who must have moved already, because he’s touching Lauren’s hair, like he’s asking her if she’s alright, and she looks torn between red and white and black, mixing into this weird purplish color, and then Cook touches his shoulder and pushes down on his wing. David looks up at him and breathes out, “Oh.”  
  
“Scotty,” Mr. Johns says, fingers in his ears, “you are officially on my bad list, goddammit.”  
  
  
  
David trails after Cook as the man leads him through the hallway, back up the stairs to the rooms. Cook’s room is at the end of the hall, but David barely notices that that’s where they’re headed. His wings are still jumping half-heartedly, and his ears are ringing. Cook glances back at him as he tugs his door open and gently pushes David inside.  
  
“Imagine if you’d got the full blast,” Cook says, when David has sat down on the bed. Cook puts his hands up against David’s ears, tugging on them with a small grin on his face. The familiar tingle of Cook’s touch, mixed with the warmth of the healing he can’t help, makes David shiver and blink up at him, opening his mouth.  
  
Cook leans down and steals a kiss, pushing David enough that his back collides with the mattress and he has to throw an arm out as he tries to kiss back, just to make sure Cook comes with him. The feathers on his wings ruffle at the mistreatment, and he lets out a noise when Cook brushes a hand out over the muscle spanning across his left wing, curled up where the mattress meets the headboard of Cook’s bed. His fingers are practically vibrating against the warmth of Cook’s skin, and the stupid softness of his beard that isn’t scratchy at all. It’s the weirdest sensation to want to touch his lips where Cook’s teeth are nipping, but he feels like maybe this isn’t real or something, it’s too  _amazing_.  
  
“Archie,” Cook mumbles against David’s chin as he starts leaving kisses all over David’s jaw, and David would totally respond, like, with a, “What?” or “Cook—“ but really all he can get out is this weird sort of, um, noise, and it’s kind of like, “Hm?” only, um, not, exactly. “Archie,” Cook says again, and then a moment later, again, until it’s just this soft chanting of his name and David isn’t even paying attention to it, his eyes closed, and his fingers tightening on Cook’s sleeve, sharp thrills running down his back and chest and filling him what seems entirely. He thinks, maybe, if someone attacked him right now, it would just like, bounce off him. He must be healed for  _life_  at this rate, the way Cook won’t stop touching him, anywhere and everywhere, soft fingertips against his stomach muscles, over his hip, through his jeans.   
  
He wants to keep kissing forever, and Cook doesn’t really seem to mind either, so that’s what they do, until David can’t anymore, sleepy and warm with the mattress underneath him and Cook’s warmth on top of him, and the dark fading light filtering in through the window at just the right level to induce a yawn out of him. Cook chuckles against his throat and lifts off of him. David watches him take off his shirt, cheeks flushing red, and then turns his face into the pillow when Cook starts unzipping his pants. When Cook gets back in bed a minute later, David panics a little ( _if he’s naked—!_ ) before feeling the undershirt and pajama pants Cook had pulled on when he sidles up close, and says, “Go to sleep, Archie.”  
  
“Mmm,” David mumbles back, and lets Cook touch a wing reverently when it lifts up, trying to curl around David like they do every night. He forces it back and smiles with his eyes closed.  
  
When he cracks them open again, it’s in reaction to the feeling of his wings tickling his skin as they automatically try to fill in for the missing heat of Cook’s body. He realizes after a hazy moment that that means Cook is  _gone_ , and then jerks a little, knocking the blanket to the side. Cook is standing at the entrance to his room though, a long line of light falling in where he isn’t blocking it.  
  
His voice is hushed, but sounds almost angry, and when another comes, it’s the same angry, hushed tone as Cook’s, but David recognizes it as Mr. Allen’s voice. “Kris,” Cook whispers, “just leave it. It’s not like you don’t have your own issues, alright—“ David can’t hear what Mr. Allen says, but Cook raises his voice a moment later, “He’s just sleeping, Goddamnit!”  
  
David almost tries to get up, to say something, but Cook suddenly moves back and looks over at him, and this time David hears Mr. Allen when he talks—probably because he’s talking to David. “You alright in there, David?”  
  
He can see Cook roll his eyes, and David almost wants to laugh—he’s sure if he was more than half-awake he’d be so embarrassed right now, but as it is he just mumbles an affirmative and nods into his pillow, his wing flapping in a brush-off sort of wave. He can feel more than see Kris hesitate, and then hears him say, “Alright, but—have him come see me tomorrow, okay? No, not about—there’s something else, you know.”  
  
“Yeah,” Cook says, sounding tired, and then the door shuts. David feels the bed tip when Cook sits down on it, and manages to fall back asleep once the comfortable warmth of a second body is back. (He totally understands why Danny likes to sleep in a pile now, it’s incredibly warm and soft and comfortable.)  
  
  
  
David is sitting quietly in Mr. Allen’s office, in the chair by his desk, hands in his lap with his wings hovering over his shoulders, stark against the white walls. He’s not sure why his mathematics (and sometimes abilities, when Mr. Lambert drags him to class with them) teacher just asked him to meet him here. He knows from Allison that Mr. Allen never sleeps, like, ever, but there are rumors too that he can—that he can read your thoughts, like the professor? David desperately tries not to think about Cook’s hands lingering on his hips, the thumbs pressing into the skin, soft and hard at the same time—oh no, no, no, no, no, now he  _can’t_  stop thinking about it.  
  
Mr. Allen smiles from across the desk and says, “David, stop panicking. You’re not in trouble. You and Dave are... well, it’s none of my business. Well, actually, it is, sort of, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Dave and I are—figuring that out.” He scratches at his chin and continues through David’s silent flailing. “It’s just—I’m a little worried about you. Adam and Dave both agree, so here we are. The thing is, we’ve never really stopped and talked about your feelings about your dad.”  
  
David stops moving and snaps his eyes up.  
  
“He funded the creation of the cure, which is a big topic right now. And a complicated one. You must be confused.”  
  
He is, actually, but more confused on why he’s not getting in trouble for having a crush on his English teacher. But then Mr. Allen’s statement finally hits him, and he tightens his fists.   
  
“My dad just wanted to help.”  
  
He thinks maybe if he’d had a power like Cook’s... one that wasn’t so... alarming, maybe his mom would have stayed at home. It’s a thought that only comes out when he’s sleeping, and the dreams play out, him and his family being—being normal, and together. Maybe his dad would have even appreciated it? The ability to save people was—maybe his dad would have changed his mind about mutations if he’d known they could be so good.  
  
Maybe, anyway.  
  
“Some mutations aren’t good. I—I don’t know why I decided to run away, because I wanted the cure.” It hurts to say it, but it’s true. It’s true, all David ever wanted was to be normal again, to have his dad actually—and his mom come home. “I think a lot of people deserve to at least have the choice?” He thinks of Allison, who set herself on fire while she was sleeping a few weeks ago. The burn is still shiny on her calf.  
  
“I don’t think everyone,” he continues, not even paying attention to Mr. Allen anymore, because he’s just talking, and he just needs to say it, “needs the cure. Like—like Danny? He loves the ability to be three people at once. But if you hate your mutation,” and he glances back at his wings, the way they look small and hunched, trying to hide, “or if it hurts, or if it’s dangerous...” He breathes. “My dad wants to help. He watched me grow up, hating my wings. He wanted to take them away for me.” His words are whispered as he remembers hospital trip after hospital trip. “The cure was a way to do that—one that would work—and it could help everyone else like me too.”  
  
“David,” Mr. Allen says.  
  
“He just doesn’t realize that not everyone hates their mutation. He doesn’t realize they can be good.”  
  
There’s a long silence, as David flexes his fingers, and his wings hover agitatedly behind him. Mr. Allen nods, and says, “He’s not a bad person, David. Neither are you. It’s alright to care about what others think, and to want to change, but actually changing such an integral part of yourself so that someone else will be happy—it’s a tough issue, David.” He takes a long sigh, and says, “Alright. You seem to have this figured out better than I do. If it helps any, David, I’m glad you didn’t take the cure. It’s good to like who you are.”  
  
David nods, but when he gets up, an awful curling feeling in the pit of his stomach, he asks, “Do you read people’s thoughts? Like, um, like the professor?”  
  
Mr. Allen blinks, and raises an eyebrow, before shaking his head. “I can’t read your thoughts, David. Just your dreams. You’ll be late to dinner, go on.”  
  
David goes, and thinks,  _oh,_  because actually, that explains a lot.

 

 

 

“Cook,” David laughs, his fingers itching to touch Cook’s hips where they’re pressing into his lower stomach, the way they’re angled on the sofa in Cook’s office is kind of awkward but still totally worth it for the way Cook is licking at his neck. He doesn’t usually, um, lick David, to be clear, he’s just doing it right now because he’s being _silly_. On  _purpose_.  
  
David’s not sure if it’s supposed to actually feel this good or not.  
  
“Well,” Cook says, almost humming deep in his throat, “you did ask—“  
  
The door opens unexpectedly and Cook drops back, turning his head like he’s about to yell about knocking while David turns red. He glances from the man in the doorway back to Cook when after a moment, Cook still hasn’t said anything. He jumps at the way Cook’s face has changed—he’s not amused, the way he was a moment ago, or annoyed, like what David was expecting. He looks—he looks angry, his mouth set in a deep line and his eyes sharp and darker silver than the way they usually seem. His fists are tight and his shoulders are set hard and straight.  
  
The man in the door finally speaks, and David looks back up at him.  
  
“Dave,” he says, calmly, “been a while.”  
  
“Get the fuck out,” Cook spits, standing up. Everything about the way he’s standing screams anger—screams danger, screams  _get out of my way_ , but the man at the door doesn’t so much as a raise an eyebrow. His reddish-beard moves when he replies with a, “Fuck, what happened to those cute little manners you used to have?”  
  
“Maybe I forgot them,” Cook says harshly.  
  
“Look,” the guy says, stepping closer, into the office, and Cook raises a hand. “Shit, just tell me why you’re here.”  
  
“You know why I’m here,” he answers, still so calm that David feels nervous in response. He straightens when the man turns his gaze onto him. “Who’s the kid?”  
  
Cook looks back at him, surprised, like he forgot David was there at all. David pushes down the hurt and says, “I—um, David. David Archuleta.”  
  
“You’re fucking students now, Dave?” he says, pointedly looking at Cook and David winces before he realizes the guy is still talking. “I’m Neal Tiemann. I wouldn’t get too invested with this one, kid. He never sticks around for long—can’t bear to see you get all sick and wrinkled before you die nice and old. That right, Dave?”  
  
“Get out,” Cook says again, raising his voice. “Don’t fucking come back. I’ve made it clear, Neal. We’re done.”  
  
“Andy misses you, you know,” the man—Neal—says, his boot tapping against the carpet. “Thinks you left because of him.”  
  
“I left because of you,” Cook yells, angrily. “But he’s just as bad, doing every god damned thing you tell him to—“  
  
“Everything we did, we did for you,” Neal bites back, and David thinks he sounds mad for the first time. Screwing his courage (because this is probably so stupid, he doesn’t even know who Neal  _is_ ), he stands up and says, “Stop it!”  
  
Neal looks at him, and gets that amused glint in his eyes again, making David flush.  
  
“Look,” Cook says into the silence, finally. “Even if I wanted to go back with you—which I fucking don’t—I couldn’t. I’m a teacher, Neal. These kids depend on me, and I’m not leaving any of them.”  
  
“Shit, you’re a little fucker,” Neal says, eyes hard. “You, a teacher? Give me a break. They don’t need you here. Stop nursing your bruised ego and give this shit up.” He looks back at David, and grins, but it isn’t—it isn’t a nice grin. It’s cold and David steps back, into the arm that Cook holds out. “If it’s the mutant ‘problems’ holding you back, I can help with that much quicker.”  
  
“Don’t you fucking touch him,” Cook growls. He looks at David and says, “Go back to your room, David.” At David’s less than assured look, he softens a little and says, “I’ll see you in a minute, alright?”  
  
David gets about halfway down the hallway before he shakes his head and turns around, but he can’t hear anything through the office door and Cook closed it after he left. He fidgets nervously, his wings fluttering behind him as every minute ticks by.   
  
Who was Neal, anyway? Cook knew him obviously, but they definitely weren’t friends. And yet... there was something there, history that wasn’t just—whatever, it sounded important. Big. Bigger than David?  
  
What if Cook decides to leave after all? David has only known him for a few months—a little less than a year now. Is that enough to compete with Neal? David thinks Cook looked really mad—like he maybe even hated him, but hate is—hate is a really strong emotion. It means Neal means something, right?   
  
David doesn’t think he can handle it if Cook leaves.   
  
The door to Cook’s office slam open hard enough that the doorknob breaks the wall, gouging it and snapping off the handle like it was an ornament. “Fine,” Neal says, voice loud and angry and deprecating, “we’ll do it without you.”  
  
He looks at David, but instead of the smirk David was expecting, Neal growls and says, “Keep the fuck out of my way, Archuleta. Your daddy might not be willing to hold you down and stick that needle in your arm, but give me the chance and I won’t miss.”  
  
He leaves David standing there, terrified and pressed up against the wall opposite Cook’s office.   
  
“Archie,” Cook says, jumping out of the office a moment later, and David shakes his head, because—because what was that? Who was that, and why would he—why—  
  
“Who was that?” David asks, looking at Cook imploringly.   
  
Cook hesitates, but seems to sigh when he sees David’s wings still trembling. “I—I’ll explain, alright? I promise, but I don’t have time right now.”  
  
“What do you mean,” David starts, and it’s something like annoyance digging at him. Why can’t Cook explain who Neal is? “you don’t have time right now? If—if you don’t want to, then just—“  
  
Cook pushes down and kisses him, and David glares at him through the press of their lips, until Cook pulls back, groaning out of frustration. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, and I’ll explain what I can, but David, I have to go. It’s important. Promise me you’ll stay put.”  
  
Cook stands back up all the way, and at least has the decency to look like he regrets it before he starts jogging down the hallway. David stays still for a minute, before he starts to run in the opposite direction, a determined frown on his face.  
  
  
  
“Guys, I’m legitimately worried about this! You don’t know Neal—“  
  
“Why would he attack Alcatraz?  _Without_  you, no less?”  
  
Danny raises his eyebrow at David, and David mentally thinks to himself to thank Colton after this, the boy touching the door to Mr. Johns’ office, and then everyone touching his arm able to hear what’s going on inside the room just as well as he can. (It’s not that he has super hearing, he explained, when David had run up to him five minutes earlier, but that he can hear what other things can hear—in this case, the door.)  
  
“He thinks—“ Cook pauses, and breathes. “He thinks if he gets rid of the source, whatever they’re using to make it—he can get rid of the cure, for good.” David’s stomach tightens.  
  
“Honestly,” Mrs. Smithson says, her hesitance clear even through the door, “isn’t that a good thing? The people on that island aren’t going to put up a fight—they won’t stand a chance, and they know it.”  
  
“What if they do put up a fight though?” Mr. Johns says, and then quietly: “I don’t like the cure either, but we can’t let those jackasses kill anyone in their way while getting rid of it. Need doesn’t justify the means, darling.”  
  
“Neal wouldn’t kill them though,” comes another voice, and David thinks its Mrs. White, but he doesn’t have any of her classes, and isn’t entirely sure. “He was a doctor with you in the war, wasn’t he, Dave? How can someone dedicated to saving life end up hurting it?”  
  
Cook doesn’t answer immediately, but when he does, his voice is small, and he says, “I don’t know.”  
  
David knows he’s about to get in trouble when he breaks away from Colton’s arm, and reaches for the doorknob. “David!” Danny hisses, but it’s too late, he’s twisted the knob and the door makes a noise as it refuses to open, locked.  
  
“What’s up?“ Mr. Johns says, opening it a second later, acting as if he’s not busy at all—just a teacher in his office. Then he sees the five students guiltily huddling at his door, and his smile drops. “What the hell are you kids doing?”  
  
David pushes through, and Cook lets out a loud sigh. “David, I told you to stay put.”  
  
“The source of the cure that you said Neal was after? Is a twelve-year-old kid named Jaycee."  
  
  
  
“What did Mrs. White mean,” David says, quietly, as Cook looks through his closet for something, “when she said you were in the war with Neal?”  
  
Cook looks back at him, his mouth a fine line, but looking tired all the same. David had followed him back to his room after the teachers had decided they couldn’t leave it up the regular defense—Neal wouldn’t hesitate to kill Jaycee, if he was helping to cure mutants. Cook starts to talk without stopping whatever it is he’s doing, halfway into the closet. “I realized I’d never been sick when I was something like ten, maybe eleven. These jerks had been pushing my kid brother around, we got in a fight and I ended up falling off a twenty foot bridge. Water was only five feet deep, I should have died. Instead I just climbed out, complaining about being soaked.”   
  
David moves back a step to sit on the end of Cook’s bed. Cook keeps talking, not looking at David. “It freaked everybody out: me, my brother, the jerks who’d been following us home. I thought about it—I’d never gotten sick. I’d never even accidentally scraped my knees after falling, Arch. So I tested it out on a pot of boiling water. My mom had told me to watch it—I shoved my entire hand in. Didn’t get so much as a blister.” He’s turned around by now, shaking his head. “My mom freaked out, man. Shoved my entire front half in the icebox when she came back in the kitchen, before she realized I was fine. Eventually we figured out if I touched somebody when they had cuts, bruises, headaches—it disappeared. I could heal them, and it was—it was amazing, Archie. My mom thought I was some sort of walking miracle, and she ended up working two jobs to get me into college.” He grins here, and says, “I wanted to be a doctor. Save people. And hell, it was easy, so why not?”  
  
David’s too scared to say anything—Cook might stop talking.  
  
“I met Neal in my third year. It took a while for me to realize it, but he could do the exact same damn thing as me.”  
  
David’s surprise lets him say, “Neal heals people?”  
  
Cook takes on a dark look, something angry in the lines of his face. “Not exactly. I thought so, at first. So did he. We enlisted in the war together—World War II—before the U.S. even officially joined in. We thought our skills would be put to better use over there. It was pointless. We were too late to save just as many people as we weren’t, and they just got up and started firing their fucking guns again anyway. We didn’t discriminate, so we just healed everybody we could reach. The war was over fast, Archie, and I should have died—we both should have—a dozen times over. But we stayed in Europe for—for years. So many people were hurt, were  _dying_ , and I couldn’t—“ He shakes his head again, and throws a bag on the bed, next to David. “We were best friends. Jesus Christ. We were in our seventies before I realized anything was wrong.”  
  
David’s heart is beating fast in his chest, soaking everything in. Cook’s stopped talking, gripping the strap on his bad tightly. “What was wrong?” David asks, and almost reaches out to touch Cook, but stops midway. He has the sudden thought that it would be an unwelcome touch.  
  
Cook glances at him, and loosens his grip on the bag. “We’d added some guys to our group by then—a guy named Josh, and a kid: Andy. Andy’s mutation is the ability to get inside people’s heads. He can—“ Cook shakes his head. “Andy got drunk one night and I was just—he said, ‘Sorry about your brother, man.’ I knew Andrew died in the war, but he wasn’t talking about  _Andrew_ ,” Cook spits.   
  
“What do you mean?” Archie asks, after Cook’s turned around, giving up on the pretense of being busy gathering stuff on the bed.   
  
“I had this—black, vague,  _emptiness_  in my head. I couldn’t remember things—I couldn’t remember when we realized Neal wasn’t a healer, but a replicator.” He looks at David and adds, “He replicates the mutation of the last mutant he’s touched. Doesn’t mean he knows how to use it, but... anyway, I couldn’t remember shit like that. Neal looked thirty all the sudden, and I couldn’t remember when that had happened. I still look twenty-five. I couldn’t even remember when or how Andy and Josh joined in, when I stopped to actually fucking think about it. I started yelling, and Neal—he confessed.”  
  
Cook sits on the bed slowly, his knee bumping against David's. He looks—tired, sad. Like he’s been angry for too long. “My older brother’s name was Adam. He died when I was in Europe, saving the world." Cook's mouth twists bitterly. "Like I said, I don’t remember it, but I’d healed him. Neal said—I’d  _healed_  him. But when the cancer grew back, I wasn’t there. I wasn't there to heal him again, and he died." Cook is silent for a moment before he adds, quieter, "I’ve met his kids, once. A couple of years ago. But I don’t even remember what he looked like."  
  
“Why don’t you remember him?”  
  
Cook gives a harsh laugh and says, “Andy. I’d been pissed at Neal—not that it’d been his fault. I’d taken off after finding out Adam was dead, apparently, and Neal went and found this kid. This kid with the ability to erase my anger. Along with the reason for it.” He grabs David’s hand and brings it up to his forehead, holding it tightly. “I was with him for  _ten years_  after that, and Neal just—let me forget about my  _brother_. He lied for  _ten years_ , because the fucker wanted me there so he could touch me whenever he needed. He ages without me, Arch. That’s all he fucking needs me for, and he was willing to do anything to make sure he had me. I took off again, after I—figured everything out, and I ended up here. The Professor—I’ve been here since.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” David says, pulling his hand back to lean over and wrap his arms around Cook’s shoulders. His wings shudder and slide around, trying to protect Cook from something that has no physical shape, from something that happened before David was even born. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
Cook pulls back, smiling a little gruffly a moment later. “I have to go.”  
  
“But if Neal is there—“  
  
“I’ve had to deal with him a few times over the years. So far I’ve managed to avoid being brainwashed into his brotherhood. You can be the judge when I get back, make sure I’m not going crazy,” Cook says, knocking his shoulder against David’s. “Okay? I’ll be fine. I just—have to go. We have to save that kid.”  
  
He’s talking about Jaycee now, and David nods. He’d only met Jaycee once, but he knew the kid wouldn’t be able to protect himself. “I—let me come with you.”  
  
Cook says, “No,” not even hesitating as he gets up. David follows suit. “Cook, I could help, I know—“  
  
“No fucking way,” Cook says, pushing past David as he tugs on a jacket. He doesn’t even glance at David’s wounded look, and just keeps talking. “You’re not coming, so put the damn puppy eyes away.”  
  
“But—“  
  
Cook grabs his bag off the bed, and turns, grabbing David by the shoulder and pulling him in until he can kiss David’s mouth, quick and soft. He pulls back just enough to say, “Even if I didn’t like you, the answer would still be no. Because I do? The answer is  _no fucking way_. Deal with it.” He lets go of David and grabs the bag, and as he turns to leave the room, “I’m sorry, okay? Don’t wait up.”  
  
Because not waiting up is even  _possible_  when your boyfriend is literally flying into a battle scene straight out of a Marvel comic book. And—and there’s no way David isn’t following him, because he’s pretty sure Danny and Allison and Lauren are already dressed and blackmailing Casey into hijacking one of the planes under the school.  
  
  
  
“We’ve been  _waiting_ ,” Danny says, rolling his eyes, when David walks into their room. Danny and everyone else—including Scotty and Haley and, surprisingly, Chris—are all dressed in their abilities class leathers, obviously prepared to go into the fight, and crowding the room until they’re ready to leave, apparently. Allison shrugs at David’s surprised look, and says, “You ready?”  
  
Casey jumps up off David’s bed and says, “Yes! I’ve always wanted to mess with one of the planes. This is gonna’ be awesome!”  
  
David tugs his abilities clothes on as they walk down the hallway, and when they reach the elevators that go down to the hanger under the school, Casey grins and has it open in a few seconds, password or no password. Haley pats him on the head and says, “Such a good boy,” as she walks into the elevator.  
  
It takes a little longer for him to get the second to last plane operational, and right as the lights come on, he says, “Shit, the professor knows. Get in your seats, we need to—“  
  
David is barely buckling up before everybody yells and the plane starts lifting off the ground, shaky and  _does Casey actually know how to fly this thing?_  It feels for a minute as if the plane is going to get pulled back to the ground, like gravity itself is pulling it back, but Casey pushes hard and the plane seems to slam forward and skyrocket off of school grounds. He yells, “Yes!” and everybody else puts up a cheer.  
  
David is relieved and smiles at Lauren, who’s clutching Scotty’s hand in her left, and Haley’s in her right. She smiles back, before they look forward. “Alright,” Casey says, “where are we going?”  
  
David breathes. Right.   
  
“Alcatraz Island.”  
  
  
  
Somebody has already started a fire by the time Casey lands the plane in the rubble of an almost completely destroyed bridge. The old prison has a huge whole blown out of the side, and men are standing around everywhere—humans in military uniforms and people with black clothes and tattoos and piercings, clearly mutants.  _Neal brought friends_ , David thinks.  
  
They all look at one another before the door opens and they climb out. David can see Mr. Johns a few yards away, and he kicks one of the military men down hard before whipping around and staring at them. Mr. Allen darts in-between him and them, and hits another before yelling, “What the  _hell_  are you kids  _doing here_!?”  
  
“Oh my God!” Allison yells, suddenly, and David spins just in time to see her make fifteen sharp looking needles flying through the air—towards her—catch fire and drop to the rubble-covered ground in blackened piles of ash.  
  
They barely have time to realize what’s going on before three more guys in black leather are on them, and one of them has the same spike-looking needles quickly growing out of every open piece of skin he has available.   
  
“Stay out of the way!” Mr. Lambert yells, suddenly in front of them with Mr. Allen right next to him, and David takes a step back along with everyone else as he suddenly starts—changing shape, growing and oh my Gosh—  
  
“I knew he was a shape-shifter,” Allison says, in awe, “but a  _dragon_?”  
  
“And if any of you so much as get a scratch—” Mr. Allen adds, clenching his fist, taking a few steps so that he’s right underneath Mr. Lambert’s scaly-green belly, touching the hard skin with an outstretched palm, like he needs to ground Mr. Lambert somehow, “the dragon will be pissed—so don’t  _move_.”  
  
They don’t for a minute—the chaos streaming out in front of them is threatening enough that David is pretty sure none of them really want to. But he stands up abruptly when he recognizes the tattoos on an arm punching his way through soldiers with iffy aim, and he runs forward, Allison yelling behind him.   
  
He’s not entirely sure how he reaches Neal without getting hit by a cure gun, just thanks his lucky stars and makes to grab Neal’s shoulder, the words, “Where’s Cook—“ already half on his lips when someone else, someone bigger and bulkier hits him, knocking the wind out of him and making his stomach feel like he just got stabbed. He slams into the gravel, his wing angrily protesting by pushing at his back, trying to unbend itself even though it doesn’t have room.  
  
He can see Neal looking at him, something between disgust and annoyance and maybe something else on his face. A woman steps up, her bright green hair gleaming with how the sun is positioned behind her, slowly dimming as the clouds roll in—rolling in too fast to be natural. She smiles and says, "Aw, he's so  _cute_ ,” while bending down, hands on her hips, to get a closer look at him, “like a little pet angel. This the kid you and Dave were yelling about?”  
  
Neal looks at him from the doorway to the old prison, and says, "Can you deal with him?"   
  
She nods, "Go ahead, hon. I'll babysit."  
  
Neal and Andy go through the door—after Cook, David thinks desperately. They must be going after Cook, because of course Cook would be looking for Jaycee. The green-haired woman leans over David even more and he grimaces as her hair falls into his face. She's still smiling. "Of course," she says, "I never was that good at babysitting."  
  
David almost flinches when she pulls him up, unnaturally strong, and his wings unfurl quickly. "Don't freak," she says, holding her hands out. "I'd much rather you go rescue your boy toy—Neal is way too interested in him. I don't like it. So, please, feel free." She waves at the door, and then starts to walk away, like she doesn't even care.   
  
David doesn't bother asking why—he just runs after Cook, and into the building Neal and Andy have just entered. The first floor is covered in smoke—he thinks the soldiers must have tried to smoke it out already. He isn’t sure which way Neal and his comrades went, or which way Cook went, but he thinks he remembers which way Jaycee’s room was. It was near the top floor, to the left.   
  
Maybe.  
  
He runs up, and the sight of unconscious soldiers and lab technicians tell him this is the way Neal went after all. It’s a good sign, probably. He wants to fly—it’s faster—but there isn’t enough room in the halls. The walls are pristine white, and his shoes squeak on the floor as he runs. When he turns a corner and runs straight into a man dressed in military garbs, he skids to a stop and flips around, and almost doesn’t actually mean to knock him down, but maybe, um, does a little. It works, anyway, and he runs past and bursts into the room that the guy had been guarding.  
  
Jaycee jerks around from where he’d been standing at the window, staring out at everything happening on the ground. His eyes are wide. The soldier runs in at the same time that David takes another step forward, saying, “You’re in the wrong—“ but suddenly, David loses his balance and pitches backward, falling hard onto the linoleum floor. His head makes a loud  _crack_  when he hits, and it takes less than a second for him to realize his wings are—they’re gone. Because that’s how it works—when you get within a certain range of Jaycee, you turn—you turn completely normal. The heavy weight of his wings is abruptly gone, and he’s so used to leaning his weight forward to compensate for them, that when they were gone, he fell over.   
  
“Are you okay?” Jaycee asks, and the soldier David had hit earlier slams further into the room, raising a big gun in his hand, still yelling.   
  
David grabs Jaycee and ducks, but the soldier makes another loud noise, followed by a thump, and David hears Cook’s familiar voice a second later—“ _Archie?_ ”  
  
“Cook,” David says, relief flooding him. Cook looks startled, and then angry, and he yells: “Where the fuck are your wings? Who shot you? Those assholes making the cure into weapons, I swear I—“  
  
“No, no, Cook,” David says, “it’s Jaycee, it’s his power, it’s not permanent, it’s— _behind you!_ ”  
  
Three things happen, in that moment. Something like a dozen men dressed in military uniforms come from the left, and without giving warning, start shooting their cure guns. Neal and his guys come from the right, and before David can register it, Neal’s arm is rock-solid and flinging out, breaking the needles before they can pierce anybody’s skin in the room. Cook jumps forward and knocks David and Jaycee back, as someone else blows a hole solidly through the wall of Jaycee’s bedroom.   
  
“Get him out of here, Archie!” Cook yells, and pushes Archie and Jaycee towards the hole in the wall. As they pass, because David, for once, is doing as he’s told, Neal’s rock solid arm unshapes and becomes regular skin. Neal jerks back, looking surprised. David spins around fast as he hears a loud yell—Cook’s yell. He’s on the ground, a long knife embedded in his side.  
  
“Cook!” David yells, and makes to move towards him as Neal kicks the military guy who had thrown the knife hard, but someone else with long hair is still just out of Jaycee’s range, and throws his arms up. Six violent strikes of what looks like lightening or electricity or something shocks every military guy in the room. Neal is on his knees next to Cook in a second, one hand clutching his arm and the other covering the bloody wound.   
  
“Get him the fuck out of here!” Neal yells, and David jerks back, looking at Jaycee, halfway across the room.  
  
“Cook—“ he says, but Neal interrupts again. “Look, until you get that kid out of here, Dave  _can’t fucking heal himself_.“  
  
“Go, Archie,” Cook groans, and David looks at Jaycee, who looks terrified. He desperately doesn’t want to, but as something like four more soldiers run into the room, he grabs Jaycee’s arm and says, “Let’s go.”  
  
Jaycee is slower than him, but they slide through the hallways—they hide in a janitor’s closet for a minute as a huge group of military men run by, and David prays the entire time that they’re too distracted to think to look in the closet.  
  
“Thanks,” Jaycee whispers, looking at David like he’s amazed.  
  
David smiles, and Jaycee says, “I saw you a few months ago, flying. You went right past my window. I—I wish I had a mutation like yours.”  
  
David looks up in surprise, but the last sounds are gone, and he says, “Come on,” opening the door and grabbing Jaycee’s hand to pull him down the stairway exit, slamming out of the door with a loud bang. It’s gotten dark outside—they run to the right, where it looks like less fighting is going on.  
  
Jaycee stops, breathing hard and falling to sit on a big piece of rock. David stands next to him, half-bent over as he tries to catch his breath. He jolts up when someone slams into him, and he’s ready to roll his shoulders back and do his best even without his wings, until he realizes that the man isn’t actually attacking him, he’s hugging him.  
  
“Dad,” he says, too many emotions running through the forefront of his mind to say anything else in response to his father suddenly being—there, embracing him for the first time in months. David just hugs back.  
  
“Thank God you’re alright,” his father says, his hand gripping the back of David’s head, like he’s afraid it’ll be blown off any moment. (Which, actually, could happen, there are people still fighting, rocks still blasting from weird places that could come at them any moment and—wow, he really needs to get Jaycee out of here, actually, but how is he supposed to do that without his  _wings?_  He’s never really realized how much he depends on them.)  
  
There’s a loud crash from somewhere, and David pushes back from his father to look and see what it is. He has one hand out to grab Jaycee, just in case, before he sees Carly dodging smoke and running towards them with Johns on her tail.   
  
“David,” she yells, and grabs him around the neck in a hard hug.   
  
“You and the other kids need to get out of here,” Johns says, quickly. “There’s a plane coming—left to the bridge. Lauren and Scotty are already there, Allison and Danny were headed that way.”  
  
“I can’t—“ David starts, before his dad interrupts with, “David, you and Jaycee are just kids, you need to get on that plane before you end up killed.”  
  
Carly sends him a look and David jerks back. “Take Jaycee and my dad to the plane, I have to get Cook.”  
  
“David,” Carly says, threateningly.  
  
“He was with  _Neal_ ,” David says back, and hopes she understands enough to let him go.  
  
“He’s dealt with Neal plenty of times before, David,” Johns protests, but David pushes his way through, leaving Jaycee in their hands. He  _has_  to make sure Cook doesn’t end up thinking he’s a member of the Brotherhood or something, because—because he  _promised_  him, and—and if Cook gets hurt—if Cook is  _hurt_ —  
  
“David, wait—!” he hears his dad yell from behind him, but he doesn’t stop. He runs as fast as he can, and staggers dangerously the moment he’s out of range from Jaycee’s powers, and his wings come back, weighing heavy against his back and throwing his balance off for the second time that night. He takes off from the ground as soon as he has enough purchase, but it doesn’t take more than a minute to spot Cook on the ground, running out of the old prison with Neal and Andy beside him.  
  
“Cook!” he yells, as he flies low and fumbles onto the ground covered with bits of rubble and glass.   
  
“Archie, fuck,” Cook says, and before David can say anything else, Cook wraps his arms around David’s torso, one hand grabbing a hand of his feathers and another sliding up against his neck, and then he’s kissing David, hard and fast and David can’t read thoughts like the professor, but he’s pretty sure Cook is thinking  _he’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay_. Which is fine, amazing, because it’s the only thing David can think either, even as he grips Cook back just as tightly.  
  
“Dave!” comes the yell from behind him, and he doesn’t have a chance to duck before Cook yanks him, hard, and they’re crashing onto the ground, mixing with the rock and glass and dirt as a large piece of metal crashes three feet away from them. David thinks it’s a piece of a  _car_.  
  
David can hear Neal saying something to Cook (“We need to get the fuck out of here!”) David is distracted though, because from this angle on the ground, he can see the men in military uniforms running forward, guns in their hands. David yells, “Cook, watch—!” but a huge, flat piece of metal is suddenly blocking them and he can hear Andy say, “Nice, Monty,” before Cook is dragging him up and they’re running again.   
  
It’s when they’re turning a corner that Cook slips on something, and David falls down with him, his back hitting the half-broken piece of wall. “Get the fuck up,” Neal says, hurriedly, but Cook is wincing and before David can ask why, can pull him up and keep going, too many men are surrounding them, their guns looking more terrifying than ever.   
  
David closes his eyes, clutching onto Cook tightly as the noises seem to suddenly stop all around them. He thinks, for a moment, that that must be how it feels when you’re about to die—everything goes still and quiet, just you and whoever is next to you, waiting. But when he opens his eyes again, all the soldiers with their cure guns are standing around, looking unsure and ready to scatter. David realizes their guns aren’t in their hands anymore; they’re instead floating twenty feet above them in the air, where none of the soldiers can possibly reach them. The man throwing cars drops the blue sedan in his hands, and Neal’s friend Kyle must be stopping the bad weather, because the rain is coming to a halt, too quickly to be natural.   
  
He can sort of see a group of people approaching, and he’s pretty sure that’s Carly, and Johns, and Adam and—and—and his  _dad_ , coming closer to them.  
  
“You’re safe,” Carly says when she gets close enough. “The professor said you would be, but—“  
  
“What happened?” Neal asks, loudly.  
  
“The professor,” Cook says, getting up and off David slowly, reaching down a hand to help him up afterwards. The professor must have been in the plane Johns had been talking about earlier, David thinks, because only he could stop the battle like this in just a few short moments.  
  
“David,” his dad says, finally, slowly and with a long sigh, and it sounds—it sounds dejected, almost, and David looks at his father warily. “Why do you still—“ he starts, and David can finish the sentence in his head even though his father doesn’t. His father swallows and says instead, “I thought that the cure had... gotten rid of them.”  
  
Cook interjects, putting an arm around David’s shoulders, close and protective (and maybe too, um, close, considering his dad is right  _there_ , but David doesn’t care, really, and he’ll never push Cook away, ever), “Why wouldn’t he still have his wings? They’re a part of who he is. Or would you rather have had your son hit with one of those weapons the military was firing around?”  
  
It’s a long, tense moment, before David jerks back, and sees something that changes the entire discussion, and explains what happened when Cook fell a moment ago. He can’t—that can’t—  
  
“Cook,” David says, trembling as he stares at Cook’s shoulder, the white sleeve stained brown from the mud, and red from blood mixed with it. David had thought it was someone else’s at first—someone Cook had touched earlier, during the battle, healing them, but—but the stain is spreading, and there’s a dark, jagged edge to it, almost black. He looks into Cook’s eyes, who snaps them away from him, grimace on his mouth. “You’re bleeding,” he trails off, as what must have happened sinks in.  
  
He shakes his head, and tries to take a deep breath as Cook says brusquely, “Shit happens, Archie.”  
  
David’s fingers clench into a fist and he whirls around, staring instead at his father, the man he’d just rescued from the building that would have fallen in on him. The man who created the cure that just took Cook’s—  
  
Tears are forcing their way out the corners of his eyes and he squeezes them shut before snapping them back open, and asking more harshly, “What’s wrong with you?”  
  
His father shakes his head, and says, “I just wanted to help, David.”  
  
“He never needed your help!” David says, wings shuddering. “There’s nothing wrong with him! There’s nothing wrong with  _us_!” he yells, waving an arm wildly, gesturing towards all of his friends and fellow mutants.  
  
“David,” Cook says, grabbing David and pulling him back, holding onto him before he does something stupid. His father is shaking his head, but Neal slams his foot on the ground, grabbing everyone’s attention, even David’s, as shaky as it is at the moment.   
  
“Have your fucked up family reunion later, we need to get on that damn plane and get out of here,” he says, and Carly agrees, pushing at David and Cook’s shoulders.   
  
“There’s a first-aid kit on the plane,” she says, quietly as they walk through the group of stunned human military men and women, the ones who don’t seem to know what to do—their guns are still floating in mid-air, David probably wouldn’t know what to do either, in their situation. He doesn’t even know what to do in his, just knows that he can’t let go of Cook. He  _can’t_.  
  
“Come on,” Cook says, quietly nudging him up onto the plane. There aren’t enough seats, but the Professor won’t let anyone stay behind, so most everyone sits on the floor and hopes there won’t be turbulence. Jaycee is on the plane, and looks apologetic when David trips at the sudden loss of his wings. Again. Cook sits down on the big half-seat, half-cot, still wincing while Carly has him take his shirt off. The jagged cut in his arm is deep and bloody and looks painful. Looking closer, David can see that the blood on his face isn’t from someone else—he must have gotten hit at some point there too, because there’s a cut underneath the blood that’s still open.  
  
“This sucks,” Cook says, finally, in the still-silence. “Normally the pain goes away after a second. How do you guys do this?” He’s pressing his dirty hand to his forehead, and Carly slaps his hand away from the cut.  
  
Mr. Lambert rolls his eyes and says, “Suck it up,” and Cook starts to laugh. It’s awkward, and Cook, despite his good-natured laughter, cries out when Carly applies antithetic to his arm, bandaging it quickly. David lets Cook hang onto him so tight that it feels like he’ll break skin.  
  
“Fuck,” Cook says, “and I used to tell guys they were being babies when they couldn’t take the realigning of broken bones.”  
  
“To be fair,” David says, quietly, “you’ve never really felt pain before, right?”  
  
Cook hits the back of his head against the wall of the plane when he leans back, shaking his head ‘no’. David jumps when he feels Cook’s head slide down onto his shoulder a moment later, before he realizes the man’s just fallen asleep—or unconscious. Carly likes to do that with drugs, David knows, but he thinks Cook just passed out.  
  
“Is he going to be okay?” he asks, quietly, to nobody in particular.   
  
Mr. Allen smiles weakly, and says, “As okay as anyone else.”  
  
David closes his eyes.  
  
He falls asleep too, some time before they get back to the school. They don’t have a school nurse—whenever someone got hurt, they’d just sent them to Cook. That makes it a complication when they get back though, because they had nobody to send  _Cook_  to. Carly knows basic first-aid, but that’s it, and Cook sleeps through the plane ride, through being carried back to his room, and all through the next day. David wakes up just long enough to crawl into bed next to him, and then to get some food and avoid a lecture from the teachers he knows must be coming soon.   
  
He pushes at Cook’s shoulder, finally, as the sun outside the window starts lowering again, just—wanting something. A  _five more minutes, Mom_  would make him happy, really. Anything but the constant sleeping—he shouldn’t still be  _sleeping_. Carly comes in some time after noon, and reapplies the bandages on his head and arm, but they’ve both stopped bleeding by then. She’d given him some sort of medicine too, and said something about him just needing rest—his body wasn’t used to the pain or blood-loss and who knows what losing your mutation did to you, really? He just needed time.  
  
“He’ll be fine, David,” she says, but David can see how troubled she looks as she says it, how she won’t meet his eyes.   
  
He almost wants to ask if Neal still has Cook’s healing ability—but he knows that if he did, Neal would have healed Cook ages ago. And besides, Neal’s group had left when they landed, not ready to be “buddy-buddy” with the “x-men”. It sounded like some sort of stupid comic book—only in comic books, the heroes don’t lose their powers and fall asleep, refusing to wake up again.   
  
He’s staring at the ceiling, one hand fisted in Cook’s shirt, when Cook finally moves.   
  
He groans, and David jerks back. “Cook?” he says, a little too loudly, but he’s just—he’s awake, he’s  _awake_.  
  
“Archie?” Cook says, his voice scratchy and rough. David knows he should get up and do any number of things—call Carly, get Cook water, food, help him move, even just tell him where he is, and how long he’s been there. But he swallows back a lump in his throat and big, puffy tears crawl down his cheeks as he practically jumps on top of Cook.  
  
“You’re  _okay_ ,” he says, and when Cook’s hand slides up his back, resting there comfortingly, mutation or not, the soft sensation of Cook’s touch spreads through his skin anyway. It feels the same as always, all tingly and perfect and amazing, because—because David is in love with Cook, and his healing didn’t— _doesn’t_ —matter at all compared to that.   
  
“Yeah,” Cook says, quiet. “Head hurts a bit.” David pulls back just enough to hear Cook sigh, and mutter, “I guess it’s really gone then.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” David says, hiding his face in Cook’s shoulder, but honestly, he’s just glad Cook is okay.   
  
“It’s alright,” Cook mutters, letting his thumb start to move in small circles on David’s back. “I just—have to get used to being... normal. That sounds so weird.”  
  
David’s okay with Cook being normal—he’s pretty sure his wings count as weird enough for both of them anyway. When he says as much, Cook laughs and tries to kiss him, before groaning and whining about internal stomach injuries. David just laughs and smiles, and rolls off the bed to get Cook something to eat.   
  
His wings curl around him as he runs. He doesn’t mind.


End file.
